The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (24 page)

“Wait a minute,” I said, a thought suddenly occurring to me. “If I was voted homecoming king”—I paused as it took my brain a minute to catch up—“then that means I won before I almost killed Grant … I mean before Grant had his accident … I mean…”

“Yeah,” David said. “That's right. You were voted homecoming king before Grant … had his accident.”

“But that doesn't make any sense,” I said, not really talking to David at this point, but thinking aloud.

David was talking again, but I wasn't listening. My mind had started to trip down the rabbit hole.

If I was voted homecoming king before Grant's accident, that would mean …

That I was popular enough to win homecoming king before I ever tried to kill Grant Parker.

Or at least, before people
believed
I had tried to kill Grant Parker.

Semantics. As long as people believe you tried to kill Grant Parker, then that's what happened.

Just because I was voted homecoming king didn't prove anyone actually
liked
me. It just proved that my classmates wanted someone other than Grant Parker to be king.

Nobody really liked Grant.

Right. And now I was going to be homecoming king—the ultimate measure of worth in the high school ecosystem.

“So,” David said, eyeing me now like I might be a bit unstable, “we'll discuss the ceremony at the next planning meeting. You'll be there, right?”

“What? Uh, yeah—yeah. I'll be there,” I said.

David's expression conveyed mystified concern as he walked away, but I had retreated back into my own thoughts.

 

38

“Do you hear that?” Penny asked as she pulled her lips away from mine with the smack of a wet suction cup separating from a pane of glass.

“Hear what?” I sat up and swung my head to look out the side and rear windows of the car. We were parked down by the lake just off the gravel road that serviced the private boat slips, where I always expected to be assaulted by either a serial killer or Chief Perry. “Hear what?” I asked.

“The song,” Penny said as she pulled herself out of my embrace to reach over and turn up the volume of the radio. Taylor Swift? Had to be. Taylor Swift had a unique variation of suck. And this was the more countrified version of one of Taylor Swift's songs. So, uniquely suckier.

“What about it?” I asked. I sighed out a breath of relief that I was not about to withstand more abuse from Chief Perry.

“Our song?” She said it like a question, her voice rising expectantly. “Have you already forgotten?”

“I'm sorry. I…” I was unsure what to say, since she wasn't making any sense, so I just leaned in to kiss her again on the jaw. But this time she pulled away completely, at arm's length to search my face for understanding.

“The first time we made out,” she said with a little huff. “We made out to this song.”

“Oh,” I said, since there didn't seem to be much else to say about it. Had I not been in the middle of making out with a girl there was no way (
No. Way
.) a Taylor Swift song would have stayed on in my car. I would have changed the station immediately. And now this was our song?

“Why do I feel suddenly as if all you care about is us having sex?” Penny asked, her voice rising to a whine that set my teeth on edge. My boner was disappearing more rapidly than it did when I thought about my mom. “You don't even know our song. I shouldn't have to
tell you
something like that, Luke. You should just
know.
”

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “Penny, if I'm holding you, it's not as if I would notice anything else going on around me.”

Wow. Good one.

While I thought this was an almost genius bit of improvisation, it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

“So, what does that mean?” she snapped, now pulling away from me altogether. “You're only interested in sleeping with me? You don't care about anything else we share?”

Okay, now that was a loaded question, since Penny and I never actually shared anything besides bodily fluids. When we weren't engaged in making out we were usually doing something that didn't involve a whole lot of conversation. Bowling, a movie, going to the drive-in or a party—we weren't philosophizing or talking about our futures.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked, starting to lose my temper.

“Nothing. Just take me home.” She retreated into her corner and crossed her arms over her chest, all but telling me not to even try to touch her.

Not that it mattered. I was angry now too. Just about every girl in school, other than Delilah, that is, would gladly take Penny's shotgun seat in the Camaro. I didn't have to waste my time listening to her whine and complain about me forgetting “our song.”

I turned on the Camaro's engine and revved it once before I spun out of our parking space, gravel spitting up from the back tires as a balm to my anger. We rode in silence as I rolled through stop signs, gunning the engine for jackrabbit starts after each.

As we approached her street I lost the silent game, unwilling to let her go without some closure to our anger.

“Seriously, Penny. I have no idea what you're so mad about. I told you how I felt. I wouldn't have noticed some random song on the radio the first time I got to hold you.”

I cut a glance at her face to gauge how my words were affecting her. She was looking out the window, refusing my gaze. She stayed silent for another minute before speaking again. When she finally did speak her emotions had cooled, but there was a hollowness to her voice that told me she was holding a grudge.

Her anger clouded the interior of the Camaro until she broke the silence by saying, “You could at least act like you care about homecoming. Act like it's important to you.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What does homecoming have to do with anything?”

Her shoulder twitched in a shrug of annoyance. “I'm just saying you haven't really been interested when I talk about it. You were practically falling asleep during our committee meeting the other day.”

“I was hungover,” I said, wondering how I had gotten sucked into this line of conversation. “I never said I didn't care about homecoming.”

“You didn't have to. It's obvious.”

“So what do you want me to say?” I asked, my voice rising with frustration.

“I want you to say you're sorry for being an insensitive asshole,” she said. “What's gotten into you? You used to be such a gentleman.”

You used to put out without making a federal case out of it.

“I'm still a gentleman. I pick you up for school five days a week, don't I?” I realized I was raising my voice and reached out to turn the radio down, as if I had only been speaking loudly to be heard over the soundtrack.

“Well,” she huffed as the Camaro slid to a stop at the curb in front of her house, “if it's such an
inconvenience
for you, then don't bother picking me up on Monday!” Her anger returned, white hot in the confined space, and she spun toward me in her seat as she reached for the door handle.

“Fine,” I said to her retreating back as she slammed the door of the Camaro and hurried up the front walk. “And by the way,” I shouted after her, “I hate Taylor Swift!”

 

39

Now that I had the demands of homecoming and preparations and a social schedule, I spent very little time at the garage. It was unclear whether I still owed Roger anything for the Camaro. He hadn't kept any records of the hours I worked or, for that matter, ever told me what he credited for each hour I spent enduring
Law & Order
episodes or picking up empty beer cans.

The Camaro ran like a dream now, and when I pulled into the parking space in front of one of the open bay doors, Roger came out to listen to the engine for a minute before I shut it off.

“Sounds like the day they rolled her off the assembly line,” he said with an approving nod. “Too bad you don't know now to work on current models.”

“I'm sure I could figure it out,” I said. “How hard could it be?”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise at my comment, but he didn't remark on it. “You actually showing your face to do some work today?” he asked instead.

“Work like what?” I asked. “Pick up beer cans?”

“The office is a mess. Tiny spilled a whole coffee on the desk calendar, and I can't make out any of the writing with it all in pencil.”

“Everything on the calendar is on the computer, too,” I said. “Just look on there.”

“Yeah, well, the computer doesn't work.”

“Let me look at it,” I said as I followed him inside. “Did you turn it off and turn it back on again?”

“Why would I do that?” Roger asked. “It doesn't work.”

I suppressed a sigh as I followed him through the open bays to the office. The only evidence of Tiny was the clang of tools and the drone of one of the dozen local country-music radio stations. I still hadn't developed an appreciation for the pop-country sound many of my classmates listened to, but I tolerated it at parties without much choice.

It took me about two seconds to diagnose the problem with the computer. The password lock screen was engaged. As soon as I put in the username (Roger) and the password (password) the computer hummed to life, louder than many of the engines under Roger's care in the shop.

“How did you do that?” Roger asked, sincere in his amazement.

“I put in the username and password,” I said with some impatience. “Jesus, Roger.”

“Well, I'll be,” Roger said. “So it wasn't broken?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes, then got to work straightening and cleaning the office. I copied the schedule in black Sharpie marker onto the desk calendar so it was legible through Tiny's coffee stains.

I was in a hurry, wanted to get in and out of there as quickly as possible. Penny was waiting for me, along with some other people, at Parr's Drive-In. Penny and I had made up after our fight via a complicated series of dissertation-length texts from her, with mostly single-word responses from me. I acknowledged that I had been insensitive, even though I still didn't understand how my behavior had been so. I agreed to her request that I try harder to be an attentive boyfriend, though I wasn't sure what exactly that should entail. After all, I spent almost every free moment I had in her company. I saw her between classes and after school and on weekends just to hang out.

“You should be all set for a while,” I said to Roger as I passed through the garage bay on my way to the Camaro. The grease pit was covered by a car, Tiny just a tinkering sound from below. I studiously avoided looking at the grease pit as I passed, though I felt it lurking there, morbidly beckoning.

“You heard any news about Grant Parker's condition?” Roger asked me. Just a casual question, but I could sense he wasn't asking simply for information.

Most of the time I didn't have to think about Grant. His name rarely came up anymore, and even the local paper could only report on his unchanged condition of stable and in a coma for so long before people lost interest.

“Nothing new,” I said. “My dad goes to check in on the family every couple of days.”

“The homecoming game ought to be interesting,” Roger said, and I sensed he was still leading, trying to draw some reaction out of me.

“Yeah,” I said, eager to change the subject. “Well, I've got to go. I'm meeting some people at the drive-in.”

“You're not sticking around?” Roger asked with some surprise.

I shook my head. “No, I just came by to check on things. You don't really need me here. There's nothing much for me to do.”

“I see,” Roger said.

“I set up the calendar again so you don't have to get on the computer. If someone calls, just write it in. You don't really need me,” I said again to make it true.

“Alright then,” Roger said, and he almost sounded hurt. Almost as if he wanted me there to watch
Law & Order
and drink beer. “Does that mean we won't be seeing you for work this week?”

“Well,” I said, letting regret seep into my voice, “I've just got a lot going on. I'm on the student council now, and there's homecoming, and I pick Penny up most days after cheerleading practice.”

“I see,” he said. “That Penny Olson. She was Grant's girl, wasn't she?”

“They dated,” I said noncommittally.

“Did you at least wait for the body to get cold?” he asked, and his question startled me.

“Grant treated her like crap,” I said, hating how defensive I sounded. “They were fighting all the time before he … before his accident anyway.”

“Uh-huh,” Roger said. “Well, I guess as long as you've justified it to yourself, you don't need to worry.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I snapped back.

“Easy, tiger,” Roger said. “I'm on your side, remember?”

But I wasn't so sure anymore what my side was. To Chief Perry and Principal Sherman, I was a delinquent; to the LARPers, a bully; to Delilah, I was an asshole; to Penny, I was an insensitive jerk of a boyfriend; and to everyone else, I was some kind of false idol, liked and accepted only because people thought I was something I wasn't.

And now, I was no longer sure what was real and what was make-believe.

 

40

Homecoming evening I picked up Penny at five o'clock. It felt odd to be wearing a tuxedo in the late afternoon sunlight. To calm my anxiety over the evening events, I had drunk two beers before leaving the house, then vigorously chewed gum on the drive to Penny's to mask the smell.

Though they had not graduated from Wakefield, as most of the parents in Ashland had, Dad and Doris were attending the homecoming dance. It was Dad's obligation to the community to ensure that the event did not degrade into some den of Satan.