A Good Idea Page 5

  I walked the perimeter of the building, testing all the doors, but they were locked. The first-floor windows were all covered with screens. Finally, I came to a small window just a few inches off the ground, which presumably opened into the basement. It was boarded over with cheap-looking plywood, which gave easily after a few kicks. I shimmied through, feet first, choking on dust.

  I landed in what looked like the boiler room, surrounded by hulking, silent machinery. Turning on the flashlight, I swept it around until I found the door. I took the stairs up to the first floor.

  Outside, the sun continued its slow slide toward the horizon. The beam of my flashlight gave everything an eerie shine—the glass in the trophy cases, the linoleum tiles, the rows of metal lockers lining the walls. I hadn’t spent much time in Williston High, so I got lost easily, traveling in circles, covering the same territory. The only sound was my Chucks, rubber soles squeaking on the floor, until finally I found the guidance counselor’s office.

  Terrified the door would be locked, I used creative visualization before I turned the knob, imagining it turning smoothly in my hand and the soft click of the tumbler. To my amazement the door opened easily, and once inside I understood why. Where I had pictured cabinets full of private student files, there was only an old wooden desk and a small bookshelf filled with self-help nonsense like Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. By the look of it, the guidance counselor was only part-time and likely filled a lot of hours playing solitaire and Minesweeper on her aging desktop computer.

  On the bookcase’s bottom shelf was a small cardboard box labeled “Flynn.” I used Owen’s pocket knife—my knife now, I remembered—to slit open the brown packing tape that sealed it shut. Kneeling reverently on the cold linoleum floor, I tore back the flaps to reveal the last vestiges of Betty.

  There was a picture of Betty and me, a cheap plastic mirror, an NYU bumper sticker I’d sent her last year, a collection of ticket stubs from movies, concerts, and plays—items that had all hung once, I was sure, inside her locker. Here, then, was the remainder of her bits, and I carefully removed them, collecting them in a neat stack before I placed them in the zippered pocket of my messenger bag.

  The contents of the box were covered in a thin film of dust. It smelled like mold and pencil shavings, but beneath all that I thought I could detect that faintest whiff of White Musk. Notebooks, textbooks, her ASM binder for Hamlet. Betty’s mom had been wrong; there were no costumes here, just a pair of black satin opera gloves, the kind that go all the way up past the elbow. To anyone else they might have seemed like part of a costume, but these were well worn, stretched out a bit in the fingers. Betty loved them like I might love a favorite T-shirt, and she found a way to wear them just as often.

  I didn’t bother sorting the rest of her things; I just grabbed the whole pile and shoved it into my bag. I would go through it later. I thought about at least throwing away the textbooks, but I was afraid to miss a single thing—a note scribbled in a margin, a doodle on the back cover.

  I was debating whether to go down to the basement and exit the same way I’d come in or try my luck with the school’s back door—would I fit through the window now that my bag was filled with Betty’s possessions, or set off an alarm?—when I heard something. The sound was faint but familiar, the same kind of squeak my shoes had made as I crept through the hallways. Could it be a janitor, making a final sweep of the building? The total darkness made it unlikely. I remembered what Rebecca had said about the theater, the rumors about its haunting.

  I got lost again before I found it. The auditorium looked like it hadn’t been redone since the seventies—wooden folding seats in neat, slightly curved rows; the stage curtains parted, a worn black scrim hanging in front of the back wall. As I walked down the center aisle, I pointed my flashlight up and caught a glimpse of the catwalks above the stage, and the lighting grid, now bare.

  I heard something, a shuffling of feet, and then a shadow loomed large on the scrim, black on black, a person emerging from backstage, and my heart froze in my chest.

  She stepped out from behind the scrim, and I exhaled sharply, all the oxygen rushing out of my body, rendering my hands and feet numb. It was the girl with the pink hair, the one from the graduation ceremony. Serena.

  “Jesus,” I said. “You scared the piss out of me.”

  She glanced at the crotch of my jeans. “Not literally, I hope.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing you’re doing. Looking for a ghost. I guess you already heard the rumors?”

  “Actually, I was picking up her stuff.”

  “You’re Betty’s friend, right? The one who lives in New York?”

  “Finley.” My voice echoed in the empty theater. I climbed up the stairs to meet her on the stage.

  “I’m Serena.” Stepping forward, she extended her hand. I shook it, smiling at her formality. The black paint under her fingernails had been scrubbed away. Her rings were cold against my palm, and her septum piercing sparkled faintly in the dim light.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” I said. “I was hoping you would be at the party last night.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really go to parties.”

  That I could easily believe.

  I took her in. Now that I had her in front of me, instead of crying and screaming and fleeing the graduation ceremony, I could see the dark roots coming in under the bleached-blonde and pink hair, her gray eyes, the hard set of her jaw. She was wearing brown cargo pants, a white wifebeater, and Doc Martens; an outfit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Owen, except for the black bra straps that hugged her pale shoulders and the gold crucifix I recognized from yesterday. Had it just been yesterday I’d seen her for the first time? It felt like I’d been looking for her for much longer.

  “I wish I had known that,” I said. “I could have spared myself the hangover.”

  “I was wondering if you’d come back to town this summer.” She said it like a challenge, like she wasn’t sure I’d have the guts. Her voice was deep and raspy; instead of being amplified by the empty theater, it came out more like a hoarse whisper, and I had to lean in closer to make sure I was getting every word. Her eyes never strayed from mine.

  “My therapist said I needed closure,” I said. “Were you a friend of Betty’s?”

  “Not really.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “We got sent away to church camp the same summer.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Betty’s stories about church camp, the few of them that I had heard, had not been pleasant.

  “It was rough. We sort of bonded while we were there, but we didn’t really keep it up at school. How did you get in here anyway?”

  “One of the windows to the basement was boarded up. You?”

  “Master key.”

  “How did you get one of those?” I asked.

  “There’s a lot of them floating around. They get passed down from one senior class to the next.”

  “You haven’t passed yours on yet?”

  “I’m not done with it. Obviously. Usually I just use it to let myself into the office and make free copies on the Xerox machine. I was going to go backstage, look in the dressing room. You want to come?”

  “Might as well. I’m already here.”

  I followed her offstage, down a hallway that led into the dressing room. Costumes from old shows were still hanging on the wardrobe racks. One whole wall was a vanity, white Formica counter beneath a long mirror framed by bulbs that came to life as Serena flicked the light switch. Another wall was covered in graffiti by the casts of various plays, going back almost a decade. I looked for Betty’s name and couldn’t find it. Her signature was nowhere on the wall.

  “Her name should be here,” I said, pointing to the long list of actors who had been in Midsummer’s. “She was in this one, I saw the pictur
es.”

  Serena scanned the wall up and down. “You’re right. Her name’s not anywhere.” She shook her head. “They probably found a way to erase it. Paint over it, or something. After all that shit started about people thinking the theater was haunted.”

  “How exactly did that start, anyway?”

  Serena leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. “It was sometime in the spring, when rehearsals began for The House of Yes. One of the costume designers was here late, by herself, and she said she kept hearing things. And that the lights went out and came back on. Honestly, it was probably nothing, but she said she wouldn’t be here alone after that. And then no one would be here alone, and that was all it took to make it into a thing, you know?”

  “Did she come right out and say that she thought it was Betty?”

  Serena shook her head. Her expression changed, and I got a glimpse of the rage I’d seen the day before. “Everyone knew that’s what she meant, but she never said it. You’ll see. No one ever says her name, but whenever something happens, she’s on everybody’s mind.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought everyone thinks she ran away?”

  “There’s what everyone pretends to believe, and then there’s what they all know is really true.” She paused, fiddling nervously with her crucifix. “Was he there last night? At the party?”

  “Yeah. He was.”

  We were silent for a while.

  “What was it you said?” I asked her. “Onstage at graduation. To the principal?”

  “I asked him if I could say a few words about Betty. I’m sure you can guess what his answer was.”

  “Why do you think Calder did it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “But you believe he did it.”

  “I do. I used to wonder why he did it, but now I don’t think I care.”

  “Sometimes I think it’s the only thing I care about.”

  “You must really miss her,” Serena said.

  “Yeah. Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You said you guys weren’t really friends, that you didn’t hang out after camp. But you’re the only person—” I thought of Owen and corrected myself. “You’re one of the only people who seem to care that she’s gone.”

  “I guess I was kind of in love with her,” Serena said.

  I found something about this admission oddly pleasing. Knowing that someone else had seen the same Betty as I had made me feel less lonely. “Then you must really miss her, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  Serena strolled over to the wardrobe rack, flipping through the costumes as if she were shopping in a department store.

  “What if,” she said, “there were something we could do to make them remember?”

  • • •

  We went to the diner to wait. It was full dark now, the night as clear as the day had been. I felt strangely energized as I drove us into town.

  The Halyard smelled like hamburger grease and burnt coffee. The dinner rush was coming to a close, and people were filing out and into Charlie’s, the bar across the street. We sat in a booth, the vinyl creaking beneath our weight, and looked over the laminated menus. There was a typo in the breakfast items, “two eggs and style,” that normally would have made me laugh but barely registered now. My head was pounding; I shouldn’t have waited so long to eat. Owen gave me a strange look from behind the counter; normally I sat on one of the stools near the register so I could bullshit with him while he worked. Even the waitress who took our order, Jenny, was surprised to see me at a table.

  I heard the first fire truck then, the urgent wail of the siren, followed by another truck and then another. As they sped by in the direction of the high school, I avoided Serena’s eyes, focusing instead on my iced tea and disco fries.

  The Halyard emptied as the commotion outside grew, police cruisers following in the fire trucks’ wake. Serena and I casually trailed outside along with the rest of the patrons; everyone was standing on the sidewalk with their hands in their pockets. Owen was there, too, dirty apron still tied around his waist.

  The sky was hazy now, the stars blotted out by a thin scrim of gray smoke I might have mistaken for fog if it weren’t for the acrid smell and the fact that I already knew its source.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “High school’s on fire,” he said. “Don’t know much else yet.”

  But even as he said it, there was a rumor spreading like flame up and down the street, passing from one person to the next so quickly that its origin would soon be forgotten. Serena and I saw the worried faces and I knew she was filled with the same gladness that was fanning out inside my chest, and I recalled what she had said before, that no one would say Betty’s name, but when something happened she was on everyone’s mind. I felt her presence now, like I had at graduation when Ann Russo had her seizure, fighting back against Williston’s tacit agreement to erase her from its memory. I saw the same ripple go through the crowd. Everyone was whispering the same thing—that the fire had started in the theater—and I knew that Serena was right, that we’d found a way, at least for tonight, to make them all remember.

  CHAPTER THREE.

  THE DAY AFTER the fire, I went to the Messenger office. Dad was out gathering information on the fire: interviewing witnesses, talking to the police and the firefighters, taking pictures down at the school.

  The office was one cramped room above the creamery, with wood-paneled walls and shabby, threadbare carpet checkered with coffee stains. Most of Dad’s desk was taken up by his keyboard and computer monitor, Post-it notes of various fluorescent colors stuck to both, phone numbers and reminders about upcoming dentist appointments and ideas for headlines; the rest was covered with back copies of the paper, legal pads filled with his illegible notes, and pink message slips. Buried beneath it all was one of those old desk telephones, the solid kind heavy enough to be used as a weapon in an emergency.

  The rest of the office was equally disorganized, littered with stacks of cardboard boxes and empty takeout containers from the diner. The kitchenette against the back wall had a minifridge, a small sink, and a coffeemaker. There was a quarter inch of scorched black liquid in the bottom of the glass carafe. I dumped it out and started a fresh pot.

  The Williston Messenger was a weekly paper and pretty much a one-man operation, with the occasional op-ed or advice column submitted by a mouthy local. Letters from concerned citizens took up most of the space. There was a calendar in the back that listed upcoming events like school board elections and PTA meetings and when the Traveling Heartbreakers, a Traveling Wilburys/Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover band, would be playing next at Charlie’s. The police blotter was a perpetual source of amusement for me, chronicling what passed for crime in Williston— a taxidermied deer head stolen from above someone’s fireplace, dogs barking too loudly, a teenager running off with the MS donation jar at the general store on a dare. The classified section was filled with ads from people trying to sell their old pickup trucks or give away kittens from their barn cat’s latest litter; “will trade for guns” was a common refrain.

  Today I was feeling less interested in Williston’s many quirks than I was in reading the coverage of Betty’s murder—or alleged disappearance. Dad had kept me updated, but I’d always suspected he wanted to shield me from the worst of it. I could have simply clicked through the articles on his computer until I found the ones I wanted, but instead I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot I’d just made—it still tasted burnt—and started going through his archives, the cardboard boxes along the wall. I pulled every issue of the paper from November and December.

  I began with the weeks before Betty died, more for context than anything else, just to see what had been happening in Williston last fall. Dad had covered the high school’s production of Hamlet; I was surprised
to see that Calder had had the starring role, a detail I’d missed when I looked through Rebecca’s yearbook. I checked the police blotter: someone had filed a noise complaint about a “rowdy gathering” that Saturday night, probably the cast party.

  The following week’s paper had a story about local election results; I was less surprised to read that Calder’s father had been reelected as mayor. The police blotter reported two different incidents of “public fornication”; the first claimed that a couple had been spotted “in various states of undress” on one of the local beaches, the second that a car with “steamed windows” was parked in the alley behind Owen’s diner. Had Owen himself been one of its occupants? I clenched my jaw. It was none of my business. There was no room for jealousy in our relationship, which technically only existed for two months out of the year, and even then hardly constituted a relationship.

  Betty had been missing for two days before Calder confessed to killing her. Her parents reported it when they woke up on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving and found her empty bed. The Messenger had come out in the interval between then and Calder’s confession, so the first articles were about her disappearance, not her death. It had made the front page, with the rather uninspired headline, “Local Girl Reported Missing.” There was a picture of Betty alongside the article, a posed headshot that looked like her missing yearbook photo. Her head was tilted down slightly, turned just enough to the left to show off what I knew she thought of as her good side, one side of her hair pulled back with a vintage rhinestone barrette, lips in a suggestion of a smile.

  Elizabeth Flynn, an 18-year-old senior at Williston High School, was reported missing yesterday morning by her parents, Thomas and Beverly Flynn, when they discovered her bed was empty and appeared not to have been slept in.