Set Free (21 page)

Note to self: stay clear of teachers in the heady, first throes of summer holidays. I suspected Nancy McCraig, Hobart High School Principal, was getting a kick out of entertaining the renowned author sitting in her back yard. She was doing a good job of it too. I was literally on the edge of my seat.

“What happened on the last day of classes?” I wanted to know.

“Katie’s final edition of the school newspaper was circulated.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “It contained a message to the student body telling them exactly what she thought of them?”

McCraig sucked in her cheeks and shook her head. “Oh no. Not a message. This was a full blown report. Unbeknownst to everyone, at the same time as she was enjoying her newfound popularity, Katie was also collecting information…no, not information…secrets about her classmates. Dark secrets. Dirty secrets.

“Katie had the skinny on every girl who’d lost her virginity but claimed she hadn’t, she knew every boy whose penis was under five inches long, she knew about same-sex dalliances behind the gym, kids who’d had sexual relations—consensual or otherwise—with adults. She knew the identity of every peeping tom, bed-wetter, and kid who’d cheated on an exam or was strung out on meth. All of it was fodder for her swan song edition. She exposed pretty much every student embarrassment, every illegality, every moral weakness, every clandestine assignation, every sweet, innocent indiscretion.

“And this wasn’t just a quick hit-and-run. Quite obviously she’d been working on it for months. This was her own hideous version of the school yearbook, complete with photographs and snarky captions. Mary Beth Garner: Most Likely to Swallow. Allen Dalhousie: Most Likely to Wear Women’s Panties.” McCraig shuddered as she uttered the distasteful words. “It was, quite honestly, the most disgusting thing I’d ever laid eyes upon. In part, I blame myself.”

Reeling with the revelations of teenage Katie Edwards’ destructive, journalistic sledgehammer, millions of questions popped into my head, topmost being: do you have a copy? Instead I went with: “Why blame yourself?”

“By then Katie had been running the paper on her own for three years. None of us were paying attention. She’d been doing a good job. The kids liked it. The teachers and parents were amused by it. Everything seemed to be okay. I had no idea she was creating this, this, scathing scandal sheet. In my school. Using school resources. No one was watching her. No one was monitoring her activities or acting as an editorial board. The other students weren’t the only ones who’d ignored Katie Edwards for all those years. The staff, me—we were guilty of it too. And we came to regret it. As adults, as teachers, we failed her. Me most of all. This was my school. I was the leader. The responsibility fell on me to protect my students and my teachers. I didn’t do that.”

All I could do was shake my head. The story was fantastical, epic even. If it was a movie, who would the audience cheer for? The besieged student body who’d had their grungiest laundry hung out for all to see? Or the long-suffering mouse of a girl, who’d finally gotten revenge for how she’d been treated?

“That day,” McCraig remembered, a grimace distorting her face, “I’ll never forget it. My first indication that something was wrong was when a teacher came rushing into my office to tell me a student had collapsed in the hallway. A girl named Lilly Kemper. Katie’s paper had included before and after photographs of her nose job. And that was it. That was the last moment of normalcy any of us would know for a very long time. After that, everything happened fast, like a blur. It was like a bomb went off. The school exploded, and kids came crashing out of classrooms screaming or crying or just trying to get away so they didn’t have to face anyone. Bedlam is not a word I use lightly. But, Jaspar, let me tell you: that day was bedlam.”

“What happened to Katie?”

“Before anyone came to their senses and put two and two together, we barricaded her in my office. We worried that once students stopped thinking about themselves and realized who’d done this, they’d start thinking about how to get back at her. And while all this hell was breaking loose on the other side of my door, she just sat there, hands folded on her lap, completely calm. It was really strange. Once we fully understood what had happened, we asked her why she’d done it. All she would say was: ‘Everything I wrote was true.’

“I sent teachers and administration staff to scour the school top to bottom to collect every copy of that paper. But we were too late. It was a lost cause. Pretty much every student had already read it. Even worse, copies had left school grounds. It spread throughout the community faster than a brush fire on a windy day. Everybody knew about it. Everybody had either read it or heard the stories.

“Of course, there were those who thought it was funny, or harmless. Some thought it was nothing more than titillating gossip. Most saw it for what it was: pure poison. You cannot even begin to imagine the anger and frustration and accusations and threats and even fear that began to spread throughout Hobart. It tore this town apart. Everyone was affected in one way or another.”

“That’s why the Edwards family left town,” I stated flatly, beginning to comprehend the widespread and shattering implications of Katie’s actions.

“Yes,” McCraig confirmed. “Vern’s accounting office, those Weight Watcher meetings, the family house—all of it was gone by summer’s end. And so was Katie.”

I spent four days in Hobart, Indiana, documenting the trail of destruction left by hurricane Katie: divorce, mental break down, incarceration, drug busts, firings, and a fifteen-year-old boy whose outing as homosexual led to unspeakable consequences—at home, at school, and finally, eighteen months later, at the end of a noose.

There were some who couldn’t quite remember the name of “that girl” who’d started it all. A few even defended her, saying it was nothing more than an innocent teenage prank gone too far. But everyone remembered the long, devastating aftermath. It was like talking to survivors of a particularly ruinous tornado, who, years later, were still picking up the pieces. But instead of recovering from physical destruction, they were rebuilding broken relationships, pulling together destroyed families, healing emotional annihilation. The experience left me shaken, and I couldn’t wait to go home.

I was grateful for the long bus ride back to Boston. I used the trip’s monotony to focus on a single burning question: now that I had this dirt on Katie Edwards, what was I going to do with it? I’d had no idea what I was looking for when I’d first begun this crusade. All I knew was that I needed to get away from the venomous atmosphere of Boston. I needed to revive myself through writing. That Katie Edwards’ obliteration of her entire hometown by the prick of her poison pen would end up being my antidote, was a surprising but much-needed boost to my spirit. As I traveled those long miles home, I felt that familiar fire-in-the-belly sensation I’ve always gotten when I know I’ve hit upon a winning topic for a new book.

Deep down, I never once truly believed I would actually write this book. It’s like when a therapist tells you to compose a letter to an ex-lover, ex-best-friend, ex-boss—whoever it is who’s betrayed or hurt you. You write it, get out all of your frustrations, recriminations, blame and pain, on paper. But never, ever, under any circumstance, do you send it.

As the bus rolled across the country, I was oblivious to alternating instances of great beauty and tedium on the other side of the window. I furiously scribbled notes. I organized, re-organized, and categorized fact, fiction, rumor and supposition. I gathered and structured my thoughts about what to do next. I read, then re-read, what I’d written, in the hopes of coming to a rational, intelligent, professional conclusion about whether or not there was a story here to tell, and if I was the one to tell it.

While still in Hobart, I’d made scores of inquiries, called in favors, and let my fingers do the walking until they were limping, all without finding a single lead to tell me where Katie Edwards’ family had gone. No one would admit whether they’d left of their own volition or been run out of town. When I put my mind to it, my ability to dig up evidence—even the kind that’s been deeply buried for years and never meant to resurface—is not inconsiderable. Still, I found nothing. Except for Katie, the Edwards clan had simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Had they left the country? Taken on new identities? Both options seemed excessive to me. But who can say what drives people to extremes? The answer is different for each one of us. My only move was to return to Boston. I hoped to pick up Katie’s trail from when she first arrived in the city, following her graduation from journalism school. I knew exactly where to start sniffing.

“I shouldn’t do this.”

We were in a familiar setting. Living room. Lighting too dim. Jenn on the couch, sitting on her feet, laptop on her thigh. Me in the chair next to her. Blinds drawn, just in case some reporter had nothing better to do than swing by for a visit. Phones off.

“You’re not,” I countered. We’d discussed this. She’d agreed. “All you’re doing is reviewing an old file, out loud. I happen to be in the same room.”

She ignored my less-than-airtight reasoning. “Jaspar, are you absolutely certain you want to do this?”

“Are you kidding? After what I found in Hobart? It’s more obvious than ever that there’s more to Katie than meets the eye.”

“And it’s just as obvious that she’s somebody we have to be very careful of.”

“She doesn’t scare me.”

“Well she scares me.”

“Have you talked to her? I mean since the interview?”

“No. She’s been texting and calling. I think she thinks she did me a favor.”

“She thinks she did the world a favor.”

“Maybe we should just let this go, Jaspar. Move on with our lives.”

“Haven’t you already done that?” I regretted the comment as soon as I made it. Blame, accusation, hurt, all rolled into one stupid collection of words and petty inflection.

“You’re the one who’s always saying everyone deals with things in their own way,” she flared. “How dare you act like I don’t care about what’s going on? Or what happened to you? To us! I go to work to make myself feel better. I work to forget.”

“Jenn, I’m sorry. You know I am. I’m doing the exact same thing. I’m working to forget.”

“No, you’re not. Your work is writing thoughtful, entertaining, beautiful words that make people feel good. What you’re doing now is mean and ugly and vengeful and…”

“…and true.”

“The truth doesn’t always have to be told!” she proclaimed. “Sometimes allowing a lie to exist is the better, smarter choice.”

I lowered my eyes and considered this. Was she right? She often was, about many things. I’ve always fully admitted that the mind of my wife is substantially more logical and pragmatic than my own. And over the past months, I’d been making mistakes. Huge ones. I used to be a man who trusted his gut instincts. Now I’d grown to doubt them. It didn’t feel good.

“I don’t know what’s driving me, Jenn, I really don’t. But I just…I have to do this. Something inside of me is making me do this. I don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going to lead or what it’ll end up being, but I just know I have to do it. But I can’t without your help.”

She expelled a deep, troubled sigh. We looked at each other for a full minute. Me, laying bare my need, my fear, my anxiety, my uncertainty. She, considering what to do with it.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

Jenn scrolled through several documents on her computer before beginning her report. “The first time I met Katie, she had come into the office looking for a lawyer. It looks like that was in March of last year.” She read a bit further to remind herself of details. “She wanted to know what her options were in forcing an ex-boyfriend to return some items he’d taken when their relationship ended. Most importantly their cat.”

“Name?”

“Fluffy.”

I stared at her. “The boyfriend.”

“Also Fluffy.”

We laughed. We actually laughed. It felt strange, but good, like something we hadn’t done in ages and had forgotten how much we liked.

She searched and came up with a name. “Calvin. No last name. It was a non-starter anyway. There wasn’t much she could do. Not much I could do. You know, come to think of it, that was probably the reason we ended up becoming friends. Within ten seconds I knew there wasn’t a case. But I felt sorry for her. I wanted to help her. She was very friendly, easy to talk to, and funny. Despite the circumstances, we laughed a lot in that first meeting. It felt like we’d known each other forever. So when she called a couple of days later and asked to meet for drinks, I said yes. I remember thinking about the last time I’d had a girlfriend, or spent time with someone who wasn’t from work or you. I couldn’t come up with an answer.”

“I remember you telling me how guilty you felt the first time you went out with her. Because you weren’t at work or coming home to me and Mikki.”

“You’re the one who made me understand just how badly I needed the diversion, that Katie might actually be good for me.”

I cracked a weak, apologetic smile. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Oh, you were right about the concept,” she was quick to say. “I was the one who picked the wrong person. Before I knew it, we were seeing each other at least once a week.”

“What did you talk about?”

She gave me a look.

“You can skip the descriptions of my awesome lovemaking skills. What I want to know is what you found out about her. What did you learn about her family, her background? Did she have other friends? Did you meet any of them? Where did she live? That kind of thing.”

“Jaspar, you know nothing about girl talk.”

“That should be a good thing in a husband, no?”

“I have her home address and where she was working at the time in the file, but other than that we weren’t exchanging biographies. We talked sex, shoes, and salad dressing.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Which is why I loved it. It had nothing to do with me being a lawyer or a mom. It was just about being girls.”

“Really?” I liked it, supported it, hell, I even pushed her into it, but I still found it difficult to picture this puerile side of my wife.

“Really. And I know this is going to sound crazy,” she read my mind, “but I miss it.”

I set aside my nearly blank iPad on which I’d meant to take notes.

I got up, stood before my wife, legs slightly apart, hands at my sides. My eyes languorously roved her body, halting momentarily on her breasts, before moving lower.

She stared up at me, her beautiful face at first curious, then softening as she understood my intentions.

I slowly began to unbutton my shirt.

She pushed aside her laptop, swung her feet to the floor and subtly parted her thighs.

“I can’t help with shoes and salad,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “but I can certainly talk sex.”

Her deep blue eyes sparkled in the shadowy light. “Is that all you want? Talk?” Her voice had taken on a low, syrupy quality that never failed to entice me.

“You know me,” I responded, “I talk a lot with my hands.” My shirt slipped to the floor.

In one fluid motion Jenn repositioned herself, fingers moving to the top snap of my jeans. In seconds I was standing entirely naked in front of her. I can’t remember that happening ever before. Like many couples who’d been together for multiple years, we’d developed a routine: a well-honed sexual ballet that worked for us. In the past, I’d be on her like she was a picnic and I was a big horny ant. My wife is a stunning woman with a gorgeous body. Whenever I saw an opportunity to see it unclothed, I was on the job in an instant. Oftentimes, by the time I’d enter her, she’d be stripped bare and I’d still be fully clothed. She’d have worked me into such a frothing lather, the best I could manage was a quick unzip.

This time would be different.