Locust Lane(50)
More damningly, local kids were coming forward to say Christopher had been acting weird of late. It was emerging that Eden was known around Waldo. Evidently she’d let the Bondurant place become something of a party house. Hannah’s classmate Jessie Beverly, a certifiable imbecile, wrote, I don’t know why ppl are’t talking about the parties this girl through there not surprised something happened. To which Sergei Letved, the state champ pole vaulter, replied, Mahoun was crazy to try to get with her lol outta yer league bro. And some young sophisticate who went by the name Biggusdikkus16 suggested that anybody who’d let Jack Parrish bitch them out like Mahoun did is too big a pussy to kill anybody.
That last comment got Alice thinking about Christopher and Jack. Although she’d never seen Jack treat Hannah badly, she couldn’t say the same for the way he acted toward his best friend. There was an undertone of nastiness there. It rarely manifested itself in straight-up bullying, but you could always feel it. With Christopher, as with Hannah, he’d found himself a captive audience for his often-bizarre insights into the workings of the human psyche. Jack saw himself as top dog, a status he reinforced with commands and insults wrapped in a thin layer of jokiness.
The worst episode came last September. Fortunately, Alice had been there for it, or it could have been a real disaster. Hannah had just started dating Jack. There was a small Saturday gathering of kids enjoying a spell of early autumn heat at the Holts’ backyard pool. Alice had just emerged from the kitchen to see if they needed anything before she headed off to Trader Joe’s. Kids lounged about, languorous, dappled with water and sun. The smell of marijuana was in the air; there were halfheartedly hidden beers. Music played. One boy stood in the shallow end, his phone aloft, ready to film the object of everyone’s attention—Christopher, perched on the diving board, preparing to perform a dive. Uncharacteristically, he was basking in the attention. What he didn’t see was Jack, sneaking up behind him. The kids saw it, though. Jack stepped gingerly onto the board and tiptoed toward Christopher, whose concentration on his upcoming feat made him oblivious to the other boy’s approach. Alice thought Jack was simply going to push him in, but then he slowed, hands lowering, fingers pincering, preparing to grab the bottoms of Christopher’s trunks.
“Jack!”
Her voice echoed through the backyard like a lost spelunker’s cry for help. Jack pulled back his hands; Christopher turned and understood what was going on. The boys faced off for a moment, watched by the others, whose smiles had vanished. Jack was so much taller than Christopher, so much stronger. There was a defiant smirk plastered on his face as Christopher’s expression ran through a rapid sequence of shock, anger, and confusion.
And then Jack pushed him in the pool. Everyone laughed. Just a couple of best buds horsing around. But Alice didn’t laugh. She was aghast. Maybe it was the angle she had; maybe it was the fact she’d seen a lot more evil male shit than any of these kids had, or ever would. But Jack really had been about to pull down Christopher’s trunks, exposing him to his peers, one of whom was set to capture it on film. An act of unfathomable cruelty, especially for a boy as shy as Christopher. Later that evening, when she mentioned it to Hannah, she insisted that he’d just been messing around. No way would he actually pants Christopher. Alice had let it go. Maybe Hannah was right. But now, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she’d been wrong.
* * *
Time passed. The clock ticked. Michel didn’t write. And then, just before dawn, as she hovered between sleep and wakefulness, she heard a car pull up. She went to the window, wondering if the media’s traveling circus was now pitching tent here. A large Mercedes blocked the end of the driveway. The passenger door opened. Geoff emerged; the dome-lit man behind the wheel was briefly visible. It was Oliver Parrish.
Alice quickly stepped back from the window. What the hell had she just seen? These two weren’t exactly close. Geoff couldn’t come up with enough bad things to say about Oliver after that ill-fated dinner party, even though the other man had been the personification of charm. And yet here they were, driving around together in the middle of the night, locked in secret confabulation hours after their kids had become involved in the local crime of the century.
Her husband quietly entered the house and went straight to his office. She gave him a minute to settle, then crept downstairs. His door was off the latch. She gently pushed it open. He didn’t notice her. He wore headphones; he was completely engrossed in his screen. Instead of the usual neuroglyphics, there was an image of the front porch of a house. This house. It was dark and empty. The image danced a little, as if it was scrolling rapidly, forward or backward.
She closed the door and retreated to her room. What in the literal fuck? she thought. First a clandestine meeting with Oliver, and now this. Why was Geoff surveying home security footage? This wasn’t right. This wasn’t even in the same area code as right. Something seriously hinky was going on here.
Fully awake now, she decided to check her wound. She removed the dressing in the shower, half-expecting to find writhing maggots feasting on gangrenous flesh. But it was fine. It was just a scratch with attitude. By the time she emerged from the bathroom, dawn had finally shown its stupid face. Downstairs, she made herself a coffee and once again waded into the social media swamp to see if there were any new developments. But there was nothing. Last night’s narrative was holding. Things were definitely not looking promising for Christopher. The hive mind had decided on his guilt.