Our Little Secret(3)
“Dog owners.” My mother shuddered to my father. “David, we’ll need a commercial cleaner.”
Do you like living in a town of only four thousand people, Detective Novak? Isn’t it a cozy little community? Dad knew and liked the principal of the high school and felt the move to a smaller place would somehow benefit my chances of getting into a good college. It’s all about class sizes, my dear. Teacher–student ratio. Let’s shoot for the Ivy Leagues. He took a job at the Cove Municipal Library, giving up his research post at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston because he had become obsessed with my education. Either he’d lost the trail of his own success and was now starting to sniff out mine, or else he was trying to relive his glorious Yale days where he aced his Classical Civilization class and spent heady afternoons reading The Iliad under the shade of the maples. I never wanted to leave the city. Small towns are a soap opera: you’re either acting or you’re watching.
I went to Lakeside High, although I’m sure you already know that. It was a flat-roofed brick building with basketball hoops out front that had long ago lost their netting. The first day in that school my palms smelled tinny and sour from gripping the iron handrails that led up to the front entrance. The locker they gave me still had stickers in it from the kid before—rainbows that were plastic and puffy and crinkled when you pressed them. I pried them all off with my thumbnail.
At every school I attended, gym teachers sighed when they saw me coming, and Lakeside High was no different. At the end of gym on that first Monday, I went to change back into my regular clothes and there were knots in the ends of my pants, pulled so tight that two people must have put their full weight into the job. I couldn’t tease the knots apart. By the time I sat down in defeat, the locker room had emptied.
“Angela, is it?” The teacher came in with her class list clasped to her rock-hard chest. “Angela Petitjean?” She said it like this—pettitt-gene. Not much of a linguist. “What’s happening here?” She wore a polo shirt with all the buttons done up, and her bangs were hair-sprayed to one side. “Who did this? Holy smokers, they put some effort into it.” As she spoke, she grunted and ground her fingers into the knots, easing them loose. “Okay—here. Now, pick up the pace! You’ll be late to your next class.”
My pants had a crimped hemline for the rest of the day, like an ’80s disco look. I knew who did it; I knew right away because two girls followed me down the hallway laughing when I emerged from the gym. And they were everywhere: waiting outside the washroom, behind me in the lineup for lunch and three lockers down, leaning against the wall while I tried to get my books organized for English class. The taller one wore dark-purple nail polish and a T-shirt that showed her belly button. Pierced. The other girl dressed identically, even down to the love-heart laces in her sneakers. What is it about teenage girls that makes them impossible to tell apart? I thought it was all in the styling, the makeup, the cloning of boy-band music and favorite movies. Now I realize what bonds and homogenizes them: panic.
Haven’t you noticed, Detective Novak? Girls of fourteen move together in a band of cruelty, always searching for somebody to terrorize as long as it keeps the spotlight off them. They’ll hunt in twos or more because if you’re standing alongside the sniper, it’s unlikely you’ll be the one in the scope.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” the tall one said. “Yeah, we’re not really okay with that.” They giggled. “We like to be asked before things change.”
I didn’t say anything back, but I remember reaching as far into my locker as I could, short of climbing in there and shutting the door.
“What’s with your pants?”
Just then a voice stopped them.
“Back up there, sisters.”
I peeped around the edge of my locker and saw a tall boy a few doors down. He was about fifteen, olive-skinned, blond, with a sleeveless Metallica T-shirt that showed the early bump of deltoids. He wore sandblasted beads around his neck and a navy baseball cap with a D on the front.
“Oh, hey, HP.” Girl number one shook back her bangs.
“Oh, hey,” Girl number two echoed. “Where’d you come from?” She stretched gum from her mouth and twirled the glistening loop with a forefinger.
“Swim practice.” He slammed his locker door and walked towards me.
I think my head tried to turtle down into my shell in that moment as I stood there in my crinkly pants, wide-eyed, holding my English textbook.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to class.”
This is where the story begins. Grade 10, eleven years ago. Mark it on your sheet, Detective Novak. I’m telling this like it’s the beginning of a love story; I’m catering to your needs as a listener. But we both know that’s not where the narrative’s heading, right? I mean, it’s bound to get much darker—why else would I be telling it in a police interview room? I like that you’re humoring me and letting me steer the ship for a minute. Of course, you might feel I’m not cutting to the chase quickly enough, the way you’re tapping your toe on the linoleum like that; but to be fair, if the chase is a murder, then why am I even here? You want me to just keep going? Okay, whatever you say.
HP and I started down deserted hallways, him scuffing an empty raisin packet along the floor every fifth step. I hadn’t walked beside many boys before—it was all I could do to sneak a glance at the side of his smooth face. A small curve of hair kicked up from under his hat.