About That Night (14 page)

Jordie doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She knows Carly and her friends pulled a special kind of detention for that prank—they had to scrub every bathroom and toilet in the school. But this is the first time Jordie has heard how they got busted.

Jordie hopes the police stay away from Deedee. She's almost ready to pray for it.

Sixteen

O
n Monday morning, the temperature is well below zero. The sun is bright, and there isn't a single cloud in the sky. The snow, knee-deep in places where it hasn't drifted and thigh- or waist-deep in places where it has—is crusted over; if your boots were to crack the surface and plunge down into the soft stuff underneath, you'd have a rough time pulling them out through the same holes. Jordie, standing at her bedroom window, groans at the thought of heading back to school. She does well in all her classes. But she's ready to move on. She knows she's university bound. And she's more than ready for it, having long ago gotten over the thrill of the supposed freedom offered by high school in contrast to the nanny-like teachers and administrators of elementary school and junior high.

Today, her antipathy to high school is more specific. There are things she wants to accomplish today, and school will just get in her way. She considers ditching it altogether, but her homeroom teacher is in her mother's bridge club and is a notorious gossip as well, so would call her mother before midmorning to inquire about Jordie's whereabouts, especially under the circumstances. Jordie can just imagine how the conversation would go:
Poor Jordie, she must be so devastated. I suppose the police have talked to her, seeing as how, well, I suppose she must have been one of the last people to see Derek before he disappeared…
No way. Jordie checks her backpack to make sure she has everything she needs, and off she goes.

Kids, mostly girls, ask her about Derek, which is exactly what she expected would happen. Some of them tear up when they mention his name. A lot of them hug her—even girls she doesn't particularly like and who, she is sure, don't particularly like her. They hug her and say how sorry they are, and how awful it is that someone would do something like that to such a nice guy, and how awful it must be for her, and does she have any idea what happened or who would have done such a thing, and do the police have any idea, have they caught anyone yet, and his poor, poor parents, Derek was their only child, they must be falling apart, just falling apart.

During morning announcements, after Mr. Acheson, the principal, has welcomed everyone back over the
PA
system, his voice hits a somber note and he informs everyone that they have lost a member of their very own community. Every eye turns to Jordie, and she slumps down in her chair and keeps her focus firmly on her desktop. He announces the funeral, which will take place on Wednesday. Students who knew Derek are encouraged to attend. Students are also reminded that winter carnival is fast approaching and are encouraged, despite this setback in the school community, to attend and participate and, it is hoped, “help to heal the hurt that we are all feeling.”

Jordie goes through the motions. She spots Ronan in his normal spot in the last row in her history class, but he manages to slip out the back door as soon as the bell rings. She looks for him at lunchtime, starting at his locker, then in the cafeteria. Then she thinks to go down to the strip mall a few blocks away, where there is a Subway, a pizza joint and a greasy spoon geared to students that does a booming trade in fries and gravy, burgers and chili dogs. She is buttoning her coat, headed for the front doors of the school, when the cops appear. There are two of them, in plain clothes, with long coats and scarves hung around their necks, looking like the homicide cops you see on
TV
. It's Diehl and Tritt. They stride through the foyer and veer right, clearly making for the school office. Diehl's eyes meet Jordie's. There is no expression on his face. He is all business.

The cops disappear around the corner, and Jordie stops at the front doors. There's no doubt that they're here to ask questions about Derek. Jordie wishes there were some way to find out what they're thinking. But there isn't. She pulls her hat down over her ears and hurries out into the crisp noon air.

Ronan isn't at the Subway. He isn't at the pizza joint. Nor is he at the greasy spoon. She's given up all hope of finding him when she literally collides with him as he comes out of the drugstore, a small white bag in his hand to which is stapled a prescription receipt. He shoves the bag in his pocket when he sees her.

“You want to watch where you're going,” he says.

“I've been looking all over for you.”

He doesn't smile. He doesn't look flattered the way Derek would if she had collided with him. He just says, “And?”

“The cops are at school.”

There is no reaction that she can perceive.

“Ronan—” What is it she wants to say? “Can we talk someplace?”

He's not going to make it easy for her. “About what?”

She glances up and down the street and spots a couple of students from school. “Someplace quiet,” she says.

He shrugs and leads her down the block and around the corner. “How about there?” He nods at a kids' park, its swing set minus the swings, its seesaws half frozen to the ground, its whirly-go-round buried in snow. She nods, and they cross the street. Ronan brushes the snow off the crossbar of the seesaws, and they perch side by side.

“So what's up?” he asks.

She looks at him. He's so calm, which should make her feel better. Surely if he had killed Derek, he would be nervous. He'd act evasive. He'd avoid her. He'd avoid everyone.

Except that those things would make him seem suspicious. They would send out warning signals, red flags. Make him a target for investigation. Ronan is smart enough to know that. He's also, in her experience, opaque enough that she can't tell whether he's being genuine with her or putting on an act.

“What if I told you someone saw you and Derek fighting at school just before the holidays?”

She gets absolutely no reaction, even when she looks directly into his eyes. Has he really always been like this and she never noticed? It can't be. She would never have gone out with him if he were this unreadable. Would she?

“Ronan, what if the cops find out?”

“Find out what?”

“That you and Derek were fighting. Weren't you listening to what I just said?”

“So what if they find out? You think that means I killed him?” His eyes bore into hers, and she knows he's having no trouble at all reading her thoughts. “You do, don't you? You think I killed him, and I bet you think I did it because I'm jealous he was going out with you. Is that what you think?”

There's a twist to the words like a knife to the belly, and she knows exactly what he's thinking:
Because that's ridiculous, and you know it. Because if that was how I felt about you, I never would have dumped you in the first place.
Tears well up in her eyes and she wipes them away, hard, with her mitts. They're angry tears, tears of frustration, but she doesn't want him to think they're something else.

“I think it's about that stupid bracelet,” she says finally. Angrily. Spitting the words at him and feeling pleased—no, thrilled—when she sees the hurt in his eyes. “I know you were right. I know Derek had it.”

Ronan stiffens. “Oh?” His voice is as chilly as the air around them. “So you lied to me before.”

A statement, not a question, as if it's the truth.

“I didn't know before,” she says and tries to convey the impression that she doesn't care whether he believes her or not. “Carly took it. She thought I wouldn't care since we weren't going out anymore. She took it and sold it to a friend of hers.”

“What friend?” He's one hundred percent focused on that bracelet, like it's the only thing he cares about, and she still doesn't know why.

“It doesn't matter. Because that friend sold it to someone else, and that person sold it to Derek when he found out that Derek was looking for something special to give me for an anniversary present.”

“Anniversary?”

“Our two-month anniversary.” She's aware how ridiculous that sounds to him. Ronan would never celebrate a two-month anniversary. “So you were right. Derek had it.”

“I know. I told you that.”

She nods. “The thing is, Ronan…” She looks into his eyes again and wishes that the old saying held true in his case, that his eyes were the windows to his soul. But they aren't. She looks into them and all she sees is deep blue. There's nothing behind them—at least, nothing visible to her. “The thing is, the bracelet is missing.”

He doesn't say anything.

“I'm pretty sure Derek was going home that night to get it and give it to me. But it's not in his room; I checked. And the police didn't find it on him. Whoever killed Derek didn't take his wallet or even the money that was in it. They didn't take his watch, which was brand new. So I figure if he went home and got the bracelet and was on his way back to my place with it, then whoever killed him must have taken the bracelet from him.” She peers into his eyes again, and this time she sees something. Anger. He isn't even trying to hide it.

“You think I just happened to be out in the middle of the night—”

“It could have been the morning. No one knows for sure when he left my house, and because it was so cold, no one knows exactly when he died.”

“You think I was out whenever and ran into him—or maybe you think I staked out your house in the hope that he would leave and go home—and I killed him and then stole the bracelet—
my
bracelet—from him. Is that what you think?”

“I don't know what to think, Ronan. I know you wanted the bracelet back.” She still has no idea why it was so important to him all of a sudden. “I know you saw Derek with it. I know you almost got into a fistfight with him at school. I know that a button like the ones on your jacket was found right near his body. And I know the bracelet is missing. Someone has it, Ronan, but it's not Derek.”

“You think I'm a killer?” He shakes his head. “All that time we were together, I thought you knew me better than that.”

“You're kidding, right?” She can't help herself. “All that time we were together and I know practically nothing about you that I didn't know before, which isn't all that much because you never let down your guard, not even for a second. You keep everything inside. You never talk about yourself. You never tell me what's on your mind. I have to guess all the time. It's like you never trusted me. You never trust anyone.”

Ronan stands up. She's gotten a reaction out of him, all right. His eyes are like flamethrowers, and she's in their line of fire.

“Did you talk to them?” he asks.

“Who?”

“The police. Did you talk to them? Did you share your little theory with them?”

“No!”

“Not yet, you mean.”

“Ronan, I just—”

But he's already turned and is striding across the playground, headed back to the road. She gets up. She starts after him. Then, just as quickly, she stops. What's the point? He's not going to talk to her. He's not going to tell her anything. He never has.

» » »

After he walks away from Jordie, Ronan Barthe heads back to school. He doesn't want to go. He hasn't wanted to go in a long time, but now is not the time to draw attention to himself by making himself scarce. If things were different—if, for example, he didn't know the cops were there nosing around—he would ditch the whole thing, go down to the lake, maybe put on his skates and go forever. Well, it would seem like forever. The lake is big. When he was a kid and his mom or his dad read him stories that mentioned the ocean—they said oceans were the largest bodies of water in the world—he thought about the lake where they'd gone one summer. He couldn't imagine anything bigger.

He feels like a fool. When Jordie rammed into him outside the drugstore, when he opened his mouth to snarl at whoever it was and saw that it was her, he felt a jolt zing through him, like a bolt of lightning. There's something about Jordie that makes him go weak in the knees and soft in the head. There always has been. It used to scare him that just looking at a girl could make him feel like that. After they split up—his idea, not hers—the feeling didn't go away, and then he used to curse it and her for the hold she had on him even after he'd decided it was over. For the past couple of months, he's been back where he was before they started going together, before that first time he walked partway home with her and made an effort to talk to her. Back then, every time he saw her, he felt a swoosh of longing and desire shoot through him. He felt it worse when he saw her walking hand in hand with Derek Maugham. He feels it worse than ever now and feels like the world's biggest idiot because of it.

Jordie thinks he killed Derek Maugham.

Okay, maybe she doesn't out-and-out believe it. Maybe she's just afraid he did. She's put together a handful of facts, and when she looks at them and tries to piece them together into something coherent, what she gets is the distinct possibility that he's a murderer. And if
she's
entertaining that notion…

He wonders if the cops know everything she knows. They have the button. She told him that. But do they know whose button it is? Did Jordie tell them? He doesn't think she did—at least, he's pretty sure that when she found him down on the lake and told him about the button, she hadn't told them then. But what about since then?

Did she tell them about the bracelet? That damned bracelet. The only time he ever talked to Maugham was about that bracelet. The only time he ever talked to Jordie after she started going out with Maugham, it was also about that bracelet. That bracelet ties him to Maugham. But who knows that besides Jordie and himself—and Maugham?