Fatality (7 page)

She did not go into the office. “I expect you have received a report from the police,” she said courteously. “This is a delicate family situation. I cannot discuss it with you. It has nothing to do with school and I do not want to be late for botany.”

“Rose, we’re so concerned. Come into the office and share with us,” said Mr. Burgess.

I don’t share well, thought Rose. I think we established that when I refused to share my diary. And if I’m not going to share with Dad or Mom or poor old doing-her-job Megan Moran, I’m unlikely to share with you two. “You’re welcome to talk to the judge,” she said politely.

“You’re a juvenile. He won’t talk to us,” said Dr. Siegal grumpily.

Rose kept her voice so courteous she sounded like Nannie in an earlier century. “I’m afraid I will have to follow the same rule. Please excuse me.” She turned stiffly like a doll made from a wooden spoon and neither of them intercepted her.

Ignoring two principals turned out to be rather like stealing a police car.

Do it quickly and cleanly. It’s over before they can stop you.

On her way to botany, Rose happened to pass the library. She walked in and tapped a few keywords on the nearest computer screen. There actually was a book on the subject that concerned her: Dewey decimal number 070, a shelf in the library where Rose had never gone. She preferred 500s—biology, botany; or 973—American history.

The book was in, of course; who would check it out?

Rose browsed through a history of diary writing.

Five million diaries were sold every year in America, which seemed like enough. How surprising that even with e-mail and handheld computers and laptops and computer disks and instant messaging, people were still sitting down and laboriously scribbling in paper books.

Diaries were a rather recent concept, the book said. For most of literate time, people didn’t think of writing about themselves every day. Then, in the sixteenth century, ministers began to keep daily track of whether they had been pure of thought.

Why did I write? wondered Rose.

I wanted to be sure Grandfather and Nannie knew what a nice present they’d given me. So I wrote to be polite.

I wrote because I loved my handwriting. I loved the shape of my letters and the way I dotted my i’s with a circle.

I wrote because I felt important. I, Rose Margaret Lymond, would be a red leather book with gold edges.

The question is not why I wrote it. It’s why I kept it.

It was Alan Finney, not Ming, who met Rose at her locker after school. Their paths did not usually overlap. He had had to search her out.

Her pulse skyrocketed. I still adore him, she thought. She could not manage an attractive, relaxed smile. Her lips stretched as if she were wearing braces that had just been tightened. Immediately she wondered about her hair.

Alan took a deep breath. He looked around to make sure nobody could overhear. He was so furtive that several people stopped in their tracks to see what he was up to. He said, “The police talked to me, Rose.”

Her cheeks went hot and scarlet. She began turning the dial on the combination lock, gradually realizing she was facing the wrong locker.

“They told me you stole that police car to buy yourself time to destroy the diary.”

Rose shrugged. But she remembered that moment in the kitchen, a week or so after the murder, when Alan noticed she wasn’t writing in her diary anymore. Not one other person had ever commented on that.

Alan seemed at a loss for what to say next. He breathed heavily in and out. Rose felt the same. “They asked how well I knew you,” said Alan. “I said the way any guy knows his friend’s little sister. Not very well.”

She shrugged again, though it hurt. “I’ve never seen you shrug,” said Alan after a while. “It’s not your style.”

“I don’t have a style.”

“Of course you do. You’re dignified and reserved and careful.”

Rose nearly groaned out loud. She had never heard three more ghastly adjectives. That was how a handsome, wonderful, sexy boy perceived her? Dignified, reserved, and careful? She wanted to rip off her skin and start over.

Alan said, “I’d help if I could, Rose.”

“Help the police?” she said, feeling even more exhausted.

Alan said something extremely rude about the police. “Help you,” he explained.

She almost smiled. Wouldn’t Augusta and Alan be a nice pair of helpers?

Alan slouched against the lockers, his height and breadth blocking her from all gazes. He was a foot taller than she was. She knew, because the stats on every player were published. “Tabor called me,” said Alan, and in spite of herself, Rose was deflated. So after all this time, the loving big brother had finally kicked in.

“He’s worried,” said Alan. “And jealous, I think. His little sister is the one with the guts to steal a police car. Any trouble Tabor ever got into just became minor league. You’re the one playing in the majors.”

Rose managed a smile, but she did not manage to direct it at Alan. She was facing the metal louvers of somebody else’s locker, as if it were a mirror and she were trying on lipstick.

“Rose, you can’t even look at
me.
How are you going to look at police and attorneys putting pressure on you?”

He could not know that police and attorneys were easier to look at than he was. At least the police had given Alan no idea of her crush. He didn’t know that all through those casual music-rehearsal hours, a little girl’s hopes had soared whenever he said hello. She sighed inwardly and looked up. But Alan Finney’s face held no worried concern like Augusta’s, no hot fascination like Ming’s, no frustrated ignorance like the principals’. There was no resigned obedience to the wishes of his friend Tabor. In Alan’s eyes was an intensity of emotion Rose had not expected and could not interpret. Helplessly they watched each other flush.

Maybe he’s just embarrassed, thought Rose. All kinds of people are seeing us together and he hates the conclusions they’re drawing and he’s just waiting for this to end. “Did the police show you the diary?” she said, as if it hardly mattered.

“No. I think they’re talking to everybody whose name you mentioned in the pages they still have. They’re hoping you shared your experiences with one of us after the murder.”

“I didn’t have any experiences to share,” said Rose. “It’s very thoughtful of you to be concerned, Alan.” Even though Tabor ordered you to be, she thought. “But this will come to an end shortly, when the authorities accept that I cannot contribute to their pile of evidence.”

Alan drew a breath so deep that his ribs banged into the tops of the lockers on one side and his book bag swung out into the traffic of the hallway on the other. “Listen, how about going for a Coke with me, Rose? We can talk. I feel as if you need a friend, and I know your family so well—and—you know.”

She had hoped for this for half of her life. But what would she say when he brought up the sole topic of interest?
This is private, Alan. It doesn’t involve you.
That contained a clue and she could not give clues to anybody. Alan would phone Tabor and quote her. With a shock, she realized that she had given the two principals a clue. They didn’t hear it, she told herself. They won’t remember it. “Thank you, Alan, but I have community service. I’m on my way to the corner right now to get picked up by the transport van.” Tell him you’ll go out with him another time, she ordered herself. Tell him—

But she didn’t.

“You of all people,” said Alan. “I can’t stand the thought of the creeps you’ll be with. What will you actually be doing?”

“Picking up trash along highways.”

“Really? What highway?”

“Wherever the van drops me, I guess.” She had to extricate herself from this before she flung herself against his chest and begged him to go with her. “I’m late, Alan, thanks for, umm, you know, being so nice. See you. Bye.”

She walked away from him before he could walk away from her, but there was no safety in any direction. Ming had been watching the whole thing from down the corridor.

“He asked you out and you said no?”
hissed Ming when Rose had nowhere to go except up to her.

“He didn’t actually ask me out. He promised Tabor he’d—” Rose stopped. She didn’t have the energy for this.

“Oh, well. Let’s go to my house,” said Ming. “My parents don’t get home from work till six-thirty. You and I can really talk because it’ll be absolutely private and you can tell me everything.”

“There isn’t anything to tell, Ming. Anyway, I can’t go to your house today because I have community service. I’m picking up trash on roadways. It sounds kind of interesting. You wear these orange—”

“I don’t care what you wear to pick up trash,” snapped Ming. “And don’t pretend you don’t remember taking the police car. What are you going to plead? Memory loss? Insanity? You remember every detail of it, Rose, and you know it.”

Oddly enough, Rose did not remember every detail. In fact the details, both now and four years ago, had evaporated quickly.

How grateful she had been for seventh grade after her Lofft visit weekend, because school was as filling as doughnuts. By the end of any school day, Rose felt entirely full, heavy in her stomach, as if she’d eaten an entire dozen.

Only weeks later, Christmas of her seventh grade, somebody gave Dad a telescope, on the theory that he wanted to watch hawks soaring in the sky. “What did I ever say to make anybody think that?” Dad mumbled. He set the telescope by the bay window, and there it gathered dust. Now and then, Rose would focus on a distant tree or roof.

For four years, she had seen her mother and father as if through that scope. Close up and painfully clear.

Then they would slide out of view, and finding them again was difficult.

Yet as the weeks and months passed, Rose actually forgot.

Every now and then some phrase or glance would hit her in the face. Rose would want to sink to her knees and cry out, but she would force herself to think of Nannie. No matter how steep the stairs, Nannie labored up and down. No matter how stiff her knees, Nannie gripped that racket. No matter how painful her fingers, Nannie played the piano. So no matter how stiff Rose’s heart, she must keep going.

“Have you written me off?” said Ming fiercely. “I’m not good enough to tell things to? I’m the last one to find out that you’ve started stealing vehicles, going to judges, getting probation, and having your friends interrogated?”

“I’m sorry, Ming, but I can’t be late. The judge—”

“They didn’t come to
my
house, of course. I guess they only interviewed the important people in your life.”

If she did not get out of here soon, Rose was going to lie down on the floor and assume fetal position. “I’m sorry, Ming,” said Rose, who was.

They lived in an age where passing information was the most important thing on the planet. People spent their lives in the exchange of knowledge. If something happened, everybody deserved to know. Some people deserved to know first.

Rose had broken the rule with her best friend.

Ming stalked away.

Alone at last, Rose walked out of the high school. Far across the student parking lot, she saw Chrissie Klein waving and starting to run toward her. If the police had talked to Alan, they had talked to Chrissie. Rose fled, running all the way to the intersection where the transport van waited.

S
EVEN PEOPLE WERE
being rehabilitated along with Rose: two teenage boys and five men, all of whom claimed to have drinking problems, now solved.

Everybody assumed that Rose also had a drinking problem.

The only thing Rose had ever drunk to excess was iced tea, when she was about eight, and she and Chrissie decided to see how much they could drink before they popped. She could remember (thankfully, long before her diary days, so there was no record) being unable to hop up and down, her legs were so tightly crossed, while Chrissie panted, “My bladder’s bigger than your bladder.”

“I won’t drink again,” said the men in childlike voices, as they were given big shiny orange traffic vests. Each vest was padded like a flotation device, as if they might be diving for trash underwater. The heavy-duty gloves were so large that Rose’s hands fit into the palm part. Each of them was given a long wooden stick like a broom handle, but with a nail tip, to spear disgusting stuff.

“I’ve quit drinking,” said each man, aghast that he was to be placed on a roadside in public, as if he had done something wrong. Everybody but Rose had a baseball-style cap to yank down over his forehead and hide his face. Everybody told Rose to keep her back to traffic, instead of facing it, or else somebody might recognize her.

“Don’t you have to be facing the traffic in order to jump out of the way?” asked Rose.

“You’re not gonna be in the road,” said the supervisor. “You’re gonna keep the traffic barrier between you and the cars. Don’t step over it. There’s no garbage worth dying for.”

In the van, the men embarked on long, sad stories of alcohol hazes and how they had put the past forever behind them. Rose, who could not put the past behind her, envied them. She clung to her roll of plastic bags and ties.

“Forget the cigarette butts and the really little stuff,” said the supervisor. “You’re after bottles, cans, plastic bags, Styrofoam, broken suitcases, whatever.”

Each person was dropped off half a mile apart on the northbound side of Interstate 395. The van would circle, making sure nobody was dropping from heat exhaustion, or running out of drinking water, or trying to leave town.

She did not make eye contact with the teenage boys. What if she liked one of them? What could be worse than finding your first boyfriend at the side of the road during trash detail? Sharing a romantic moment of Styrofoam-stabbing?

But one of them nudged her. “Wanna wear my cap?” He was disfigured by acne and crooked teeth, but his smile was kind. He said softly, “Mostly the cars is going by so fast they don’t see you at all. Nobody’s gonna know you. But under the cap you can sort of hide out. You could stick your hair under this.”

Rose’s blond hair was shoulder length. It was thin and she rarely wore it in a ponytail because she looked bald. Rose needed all the hair she could get and liked it right up next to her face. He was offering her an old minor league baseball cap, black with a red machine-embroidered logo and a misshapen bill from going through the wash.