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  When I needed to treat the sting of guilt that sometimes hit me like a bad flu.

  It’s not like I’m an unabashed user. I take breaks, sometimes for months. And I always feel bad about starting up again. But then I just take a pill, and I feel better.

  Anyway I couldn’t take a pill even if I wanted to. I had to go and pick up Lucas’s things at the school later. So I went back to the apartment and waited for something to happen, for Lucas to appear, for good news, while the walls closed in on me.

  * * *

  It was just after 3 P.M. School didn’t let out for another half an hour, but students were already milling about outside on the front steps of Westfield High. The same spot where the most popular kids hung out during my time there. Eleven years had passed since I was in this high school, the miniature version of this watchful, judgmental town. Starting in ninth grade, our mother’s town bicycle reputation seemed to cling to me like a bad household smell. A double standard that didn’t apply to Lucas, of course, whereas I reeked of slut everywhere I went. I could feel people watching for signs that I was like her. As if my vagina were going to click on any minute like a Hoover vacuum. (For this reason, and a rabid fear of pregnancy, I’d never had sex on Wayoata soil. I waited until college, where I lost my virginity to a gentle English lit student with a Zoloft prescription.) Having these big breasts didn’t help things. Rumors would come in waves, random and unprovoked and without a wisp of truth. Boys that I supposedly sucked and fucked in Dickson Park, the frozen hot dog that broke off inside me and caused an infection that led to me missing a week of school (it was really appendicitis), hand jobs for the football team for a case of light beer (the light beer was the part that really bothered me—like I would have done it for anything less than regular beer).

  Adolescent self-consciousness still seeped into me as I walked by a pack of freshman girls wearing low-slung jeans and hairbands. Their T-shirts were tied tight in the back, exposing their narrow midriffs. These girls looked alarmingly young. One of them whispered something, and they all looked me over. Stared as I climbed each step, wearing matching mean-girl smirks and performing a synchronized slow tilt of their heads like they had practiced in a mirror.

  * * *

  A basketball practice was going on in the gym. The squeal of sneakers hitting the floor was sharp and made my nerves even more jagged. I made a point to pass the cafeteria. The lights were off, but I could still easily see inside. The lunch lady—I knew this because she still had her hairnet on—was sitting, bent over, changing from her black grease-spattered shoes into white sneakers. Clearly struggling with her own big-boned inflexibility, she looked sweaty. She caught me staring; we made eye contact before I could look away. Even from where I was, I could see a shadowy upper lip. She scrunched up her face, cracked her neck like a prison guard, pointed to the CLOSED sign.

  The guidance counselor’s office was in the same spot. The door was half open, but the room was empty. I spotted Mr. Lowe’s motorcycle helmet on his desk, so he hadn’t left yet.

  I decided to wait a few minutes and sunk down into the middle of the same blue couch from when I went there. Its threadbare cushions now covered with a Mexican blanket. The coffee table was the same too, only now it was covered with even more initials loving other initials corralled in jagged hearts. I WANT TO BLOW MR. LOWE was still there, near the edge of the table but marred by the overlapping carved declaration that ANAL IS THE NEW ORAL!!!!

  * * *

  I could have written it. The part about Mr. Lowe. I’d had a blinding crush on him my sophomore year and spent several months malingering with anxiety attacks just so I could spend an hour with him. Not that we ever really talked much. Instead, after I gave him a rundown of my symptoms that I’d lifted from a pamphlet, he told me that music helped him “mentally flatline” and so that’s what we did, we listened to music. Music he took upon himself to introduce me to (nineties alt-rock), and whenever his dark brown eyes made contact—mesmerizing eyes—he made me feel so fucking visible that I’d run home and find out everything I could about some obscure West Coast band.

  He even had me listen to his own freshly cut CD and asked me what I thought of it. Of course I panted and swooned and said all the right things, and he gave me a copy. I listened to it night after night, lovesick, searching for hidden meanings in lyrics that could be about me, and fantasized about riding on the back of his bike, parking and wandering off into back lanes or construction sites or derelict buildings. (I was not the sort of schoolgirl who fantasized about having sex on plush beds with candlelight; I wonder what that said about me.)

  I guess as counselors went, he wasn’t really great, but at the time, under the influence of a schoolgirl crush, I knew he was just biding his time until he got his big break. I felt like we had this whole on-the-margins kinship; both me and Mr. Lowe belonged in big cities. Together of course.

  I stopped coming to our “sessions” after my mother’s accident. At the time, I felt that I was no longer worthy of his attention. I needed to feel punished.

  “Mia? Hey.” His voice set off a reaction; I was back rolling around in my bed listening to him sing. He closed the door. “How are you holding up?”

  I answered with a stammered “I’m fine. Considering.”

  “I know. I know. God. What you must be going through…” Mr. Lowe gave me an agonized look like he was really struggling to come up with the right words to console someone whose brother could be a maniac. I shook my head to tell him he didn’t need to say anything. He blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s nice to see you, I mean, not like this.… It’s just that I’ve thought about you over the years. Lucas told me you were doing really well in Chicago.”

  Mr. Lowe did look genuinely happy to see me. He hadn’t changed much at all. Older. Probably fortyish. The black-rimmed glasses were new, but his dark brown hair was still thick with curls. He was wearing a blue button-down, giving him an overall sexy nerd appeal.

  “It’s nice to see you too. Are you still playing music?”

  He gave an embarrassed chuckle. “I’m in the house band at Detours Bar … so if you count that, then yeah, I’m still playing.”

  “Well, that’s good.” It wasn’t really. Detours was a dumpy bar that sold dollar-special beers and had a fog machine that set off asthma attacks.

  “So here’s, uh, Lucas’s things, or at least what the police didn’t take.” He set the box down on the coffee table. A rolled poster of Shakespeare sticking out.

  Beholding my brother’s teaching career whittled away into something that could fit into a box was a miserable sight.

  “He didn’t do what they’re accusing him of, Mr. Lowe.” I had to say this, had to keep saying it to as many people as possible. Try to turn the tide wherever I could.

  “Eric. Call me Eric. Lucas is so well-liked here, as a teacher and coach.” A good dodge on giving an opinion regarding Lucas’s guilt. He sat down across from me. Elbows on knees, his fingers loosely steepled.

  I decided to cut to the chase. “Can you tell me anything that would help me understand how this is happening?”

  He scratched at the back of his neck. “I’ll tell you everything I told the police; they interviewed the entire staff. I did not personally witness anything untoward going on between your brother and Joanna or any other student. If anything, it was Lucas who was pestered. He had a bit of a following with the teenage girls. I mean, I’ve been the object of a few crushes over the years.” I expected a look or a nod that counted me among the enamored, but there wasn’t one. “But nothing like what Lucas had to put up with. It seems your brother’s a pretty good-looking guy. He asked me several times how to handle it. How to let them down gently without damaging their self-esteem. He was very sensitive about it. I am as surprised as anyone by the accusations.”

  A second or two passed. I was hoping for something more, more conviction in his voice. A firm proclamation of my brother’s innocence.

  “You’ve got a hand mark on
your cheek.” He broke the brief, awkward silence.

  “What?” I touched my cheek as if I could feel the outline of Kathy’s hand.

  “Ice. Let me get you some ice. I’ll be right back.” Eric was out of the room before I could stop him. I glanced at the pamphlet rack, half empty. Just a few crumpled looking scraps on HPV and sexting. I noticed a dog-eared poster hanging loose on the wall next to the rack. There was something about it. I stood and pushed back its corner. It was Garrett Burke doing his best UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU riff, but in blue shirtsleeves that hugged his bulging biceps and chest a little too tight. Deputy Gym-Rat was clearly trying too hard.

  THE WAYOATA POLICE WANT YOU TO TAKE THE PLEDGE TO DRIVE SAFE. Written in marker at the bottom were the details for an April school assembly on safe driving.

  Huh. I wondered how many pledges Garrett had helmed as WPD’s hot poster boy. Bet all the girls showed up to take their abstinence pledge, don’t-text-and-drive pledge, an anti-binge-drinking pledge, don’t-hit-your-girlfriend pledge, a wear-a-helmet pledge. How bored was he, before Joanna’s body turned up? Did he feel a tiny tinge of relief that there was a murder to solve? That something was actually happening.

  Eric was back, ice pack in hand. “So what happened?” Maybe because I was standing, maybe because he was just being kind, he leaned in, tucked my hair behind my ear, and placed the ice on my cheek. Without meaning to, I startled at this simple act of gentleness. Then because he looked worried that he’d done the wrong thing, I thanked him for the ice and gave him an abbreviated version of events at the press conference in a way that made me sound less antagonistic than I had been.

  “Kathy can be … I mean I shouldn’t be saying this, but she’s very, well—how to put it?—she had a strong personality even before losing Joanna.” He made a face, like he needed to be coaxed to say more.

  “What does that mean?” My mouth felt numb.

  “It means, you probably don’t want to cross paths with her on a good day.”

  “Yeah, Kathy has quite the arm. Does she do that a lot? Go around hitting people?” I wanted him to say something bad about her, but I also knew I was setting myself up to hear No, just the sister of suspected murderers.

  “No, no, nothing like that. Kathy is just very aggressive. Even with Joanna, she was constantly hovering over her, clearing obstacles. Perceived obstacles, I should say. The dad, Ian Wilkes, was pretty easygoing. Hardly ever saw him.” That didn’t surprise me. Ian had just stood there when Kathy pulverized my cheek. He struck me as a weak wisp of a man, fine-boned and nervous behind his reflective specs. “But if it looked like Joanna wasn’t going to get the lead in the musical, Kathy Wilkes marched in and strong-armed the drama teacher into giving it to her. I mean, the Wilkeses sort of run things in this town, don’t they? I think if Kathy didn’t own the only competitive dance studio in Wayoata, Joanna probably would’ve been subject to a lot more torment.”

  Somehow I knew that Kathy ran a studio, Shooting Stars. It was on the second floor in a strip mall. At night, with the lights on, you could see the girls in bodysuits with wads of hair gathered tight at the back of their heads and glimpse Kathy pacing up and down, adjusting arms, legs with a yardstick.

  “So you counseled Joanna?” Please tell me it was because some boy knocked her up, I kept repeating in my mind.

  “It was part of her probation.”

  “Probation?’

  “Oh. Yeah, it’s common knowledge that Joanna was caught with marijuana in her locker just before Christmas break. Swore she was just keeping it for her friend, but it’s no secret her boyfriend was the school dealer.”

  “Boyfriend?” I interrupted.

  “Dylan Yates. He’s a bit of a wayward kid. Nineteen years old, should have graduated last June but was expelled for bringing a knife to school. He was trying to show off, play gangster.” So Joanna had another side than the sweet, overachiever described in her obit; she was pregnant and dating a drug dealer. This was good. There was another suspect.

  A burst of knocks at the door. “Sorry, jus’ a sec.” Eric opened it to a teary-eyed girl in a tank top and shorts with thin infected-looking scratches that laddered her legs and arms. She was showing off a new gash on her inner arm that was spurting some serious blood. Eric swung into action, had me grab wads of tissues to sop up the blood, and hustled the girl toward the nurse’s station. He mouthed, “Sorry,” over her head as I followed them tottering down the hall. I lagged behind when they reached the nurse’s station and sneaked out. I didn’t want to run into anyone else here.

  * * *

  I drove around looking for my brother like he was some kind of lost dog. I fought the urge to roll down the window and start calling out his name. It wasn’t until I pulled up to the apartment block that I realized I’d forgotten his things back at the school. Goddammit. I did not want to have to go there again. The caretaker’s daughter whipped into the lot in an old station wagon, jolted to a stop. Her head snapped forward. Then she started lurching back and forth, trying—badly—to park. She got out, slammed the creaky faux wood–paneled door with two plastic bags hooked on her wrists. The Harold’s Grocers logo screamed out at me.

  “You’re not old enough to drive.”

  Bailey shrugged, tried for a no-biggie gesture, but her eyes darted around the lot. “I know how to, though. It’s fine. I’m getting my beginner’s soon.” She fidgeted with the bags. Her homemade jeans shorts were cut too short; the pockets, each full of change, sagged past their tattered fringe like twin hobo satchels. Poor girl. I knew all too well what it was like to be the one who had to be the adult while the parent languished on the couch all day in a sour haze of booze.

  “Need help?” One bag held three bottles of pop; it looked heavy and dangerously close to breaking.

  “Nah. It’s light.” She did a kind of arm curl with the bags as if to prove how strong she was. This little show of bravado made me sad. I wanted to whisk her away to a teen Al-Anon meeting.

  “Y’know, while I’m here, if you need a ride to the store or something, I can give you one.” I was probably making an offer I couldn’t fulfill, but still, I knew that it went a long way, that feeling when someone noticed the shit-storm you were weathering.

  “Why?” She bobbed her head, clearly taken aback by the offer. “I can drive. Really.”

  “Well, what if you get caught? You might not be able to get your license.” We walked into the building together.

  “I don’t do it often.” She rolled her eyes, but a rueful smile flickered over her lips.

  “Just be careful.” In the foyer, Mr. Chin-puff, the ogler of girls just into their teens, was emptying his mailbox. Bailey cast him a cagey glance.

  “Yeah, I will,” she called over her shoulder as she scurried fast down the hall and into the property manager’s suite.

  Chin-puff followed me onto the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor. Who takes an elevator up one flight? He was wearing beige pleated Dockers and a blue T-shirt that said I.T. SPECIALIST in a SWAT-style yellow font across the back. I glanced at the magazine he had rolled up in his hand, expecting it to be some top-shelf porno type thing, but it was a guns and ammo catalogue.

  He turned and faced me, sighing so theatrically my hair actually moved under the gust of his breath. “Hot out there.”

  “It is.” I avoided making eye contact, but rather than getting the hint, he took it to mean he could look as hard and as long at me as he wanted. Normally I would have returned the stare-down (why should I be the only who’s uncomfortable?), but something, the close confines of the elevator maybe, or the leather case hanging off his belt that I associated with penknives, told me that was a bad idea.

  “Hey, you just move in?”

  “Yeah, I did.” This guy was either screwing with me or really out of touch with current events. I couldn’t tell.

  “Hunh.” Finally the doors opened at their slow drawbridge pace. But before he got off, he pressed his thumb on the Door Open butt
on. “My name’s Dale Burton, 2D. You ever, uh, you know, need anything, just, uh, ‘come and knock on my door.’” He started singing the Three’s Company theme song. But there was no charm to it. He leaned forward in a near lunge, his eyes roaming my body. He didn’t smile. When the doors shut, I heard an angry laugh.

  * * *

  At six o’clock I watched myself on the news while shooting back three bourbons, courtesy of my twin’s bar. I sounded nervous and misguided, even neurotically loyal. Like those mothers of serial killers who still think their sons are innocent, despite all their sons’ courtroom smirking when the crimes are described.

  A picture of Lucas flashed across the screen. I wondered who chose it. He was obviously in the middle of coaching a hockey practice, his Bulldogs Windbreaker zipped up to his chin, Bulldogs ball cap pulled low, the same ball cap that was on the coffee table right there in front of me. A scowl on his face as he looked out onto the ice.

  A quick history: Lucas’s hockey scholarship to Ferris State, his unfortunate knee injury. Cut to another picture with Zoey and Lucas, the one she’d showed me yesterday, the Saint Patrick’s Day shot. Lucas suddenly looked much older than Zoey, laugh lines emphasized by the hard flash on the camera phone, eyes shot red, sweaty skin glistening with alcohol and horniness. It didn’t help either (how did I miss that earlier?) that Lucas was glancing down Zoey’s top. FORMER STUDENT was the caption.

  The voice-over then reported that other girls in his classes had come forward to say Mr. Haas made sexual advances toward them. I choked on my bourbon. “What the fuck?” I yelled at the TV. It was like a grenade had been tossed into the room and there was nowhere to take cover. This was out of control. My twin, his life, his reputation detonated right in front of me.