After the Woods (21 page)

Paula opens a door and we step from the cinder-block stairwell into full-blown color. The third floor is a narrow hallway that stretches the perimeter of a sunken area three levels down, reached by a vertigo-inducing open iron staircase.

Paula leans in. “I suggest not looking down.”

I do anyway. In one corner, a weatherwoman gestures in front of a blank green screen. Computer stations are manned by men with sweat stains and women in ponytails pierced with pencils. Red Bull cans litter desks and fill mesh buckets. A pale young woman in a pinstriped oxford stares up at me wanly as she pours a packet of Emergen-C into a glass of water. On the wall, an oversized digital clock ticks off 120 minutes and 16 seconds until airtime.

Everyone looks as abused as I feel.

Paula leads me through a frosted glass door and strides to her desk. The office is the mirror image of her home study, in dark chocolate wood and cream accent rugs and pillows, but the furniture is less expensive-looking. She waves me toward a chair and sits behind her desk, moving a manila folder toward me. I examine the folder. Clipped to the front is one sheet of a computer printout, a long chain of code, gibberish, strings of nonsense with abrupt endings, as if the inputter kept hitting walls. On the side of the folder is a typed file tab that reads
LAPIN/JESSUP/CHAT ROOM
.

I clear my throat. “I didn't think chat rooms still existed.”

“Neither did I. But that's not saying much.”

“There are so many other ways to talk,” I say.

“Not if you don't want anyone listening. Remember I told you about the deep background we had but couldn't confirm?” Paula asks.

“About Ana,” I say.

“And the Prey fan forum. The police aren't the only ones capable of tapping into Donald Jessup's private conversations. I happen to have a really savvy intern. According to him, there's a fan forum for Prey gamers set up like an old-fashioned chat room. You access it through an app. Usually, the conversations drift off into IM space. Unless you happen to like reading your old conversations. In which case, you make certain changes to your settings.”

“You save your conversations.”

“Specifically, you check off the little boxes called ‘Log IMs' and ‘Log Chats.' Guess who checked off the little boxes?”

I stare at the folder, afraid.

“Not Donald. We hoped so, but no. However, he did install a third-party software program called Monitor Sniffer, which monitors, records, and captures AIM conversations on all computers in a network, exporting intercepted messages to HTML files. Once you close a chat window, Monitor Sniffer automatically logs all of your chats.”

“What does this have to do with Liv?” I ask.

Someone knocks at the door, a fast rap. Paula yells to come in. A slender guy not much older than me with a Bluetooth and an electronic tablet in the crook of his arm opens the door. His eyes are dark-rimmed and match his mossy green sweater vest. When he gets closer, I realize they're tattooed with eyeliner.

He offers his hand. “I'm Josh. Production assistant–slash–intern. You're Julia Spunk. Of the Shiverton Abduction.” He pumps my hand, his starched French cuff unmoving. I wonder what else he knows. “I give Paula the time.”

“The time?” I say.

Josh presses his knuckles to his head. “I alert Paula to the number of minutes until we go on air. As you know, Paula's on the ten o'clock news. So: one hundred twenty minutes!”

“Josh will also help tape our interview downstairs. I'm just prepping Julia; we'll be downstairs in five minutes, Josh.”

Josh rocks on man-heels and hugs his tablet to his chest.

“That's all, Josh,” she says.

He grins. “Of course. Can I get you anything before I go? Tea? Red Bull? Matcha for you, Paula?”

“No, thank you. You can go now.”

He backs out of the room and leaves the door open a crack.

“Josh is eager to please. And maybe a little starstruck by you,” Paula says.

“Starstruck?”

“We've all spent a lot of time thinking about you over the last year. Your story didn't end for us after the woods. Actually, that was when it started,” Paula says, then flutters her hand at me. “Now open the file.”

The folder contains one sheet of paper. Above a string of code that looks like an IP address is one line of text:

“Shy SWF looking to meet Preymate for chat, play, more. E-mail direct [email protected]”

Paula stares, pupils big, waiting for me to say something. But I don't trust my voice.

“Do you want to know who that IP address belongs to?” she asks.

I nod.

“It's registered to the Lapin household,” she says gravely.

I reread it, and am quiet for a moment. Then I sputter, “Liv's toying, killing time. She probably sent it during school.”

Paula points at the time stamp: July 12, 2013, 8:30 p.m.

“That doesn't mean anything. Liv gets bored and does dumb things constantly to piss off Deborah. Like seeing this loser guy named Shane. In fact, maybe that's how she and Shane hooked up. He answers the message, and they realize they're a match made in heaven. See, that makes a lot of sense.” Even as I say it, I know how lame it sounds. There are a lot more direct ways to hook a bottom-feeder like Shane than playing a misogynistic video game.

“Julia, think,” Paula says. “My intern found this message in Donald Jessup's saved cache of private forum messages. We can't crack his e-mail, but I think the import is clear: that message is like an invitation for any creep to come find you.”

The silence fills with computer clacks and shouts wafting up from floors below. Paula is crouched in front of me, moving a hunk of hair from my face. Suddenly everything is blurry; I'm tearing up. Because I know ancient chat-room messages aren't the only connection between Liv and Donald Jessup.

“It's just esoteric code in the electronic ether, even if it is caught on a printout.” My voice cracks and falters. Maybe, but charcoal and paper sent through the old-fashioned postal service is real.

“Julia?” Paula says. “We can make this right. Even if Liv somehow invited Donald Jessup into your world, you can make sure it never happens to another girl. Because the fact remains that he did not belong on the streets.” Paula grabs my shoulders and gives me a firm shake. “He did not belong in the woods.”

Get yourself together, Julia.

The black in my belly slithers, spreads, takes up space. It rises, but not for Paula.

Josh raps at the door, and calls, “Ready for taping.”

Paula slaps her knees and stands. “Let's do this.”

I don't feel myself leave her office, but I must, because suddenly I am banging down the fire-escape stairs, past Josh, who presses his whole self against the landing rail with a thin smile, past the editor buns and sweat stains, past the weather GIRL who is on camera right now but loses concentration as I blaze by. I am in a daze as they sit me in a chair, strip off my jacket and scarf, brush my hair away from my face, and sweep a puff over my nose and forehead. Someone clips a microphone to the V-neck of my sweater and tucks the attached battery pack under my leg. When I look at the camera I see Josh, who makes a small wave, and a video screen in front of the camera lens mirroring me in my chair.

“Don't look at the camera. Look at me,” Paula instructs.

Her questions are simple and straightforward. There are ten or maybe fifteen; I lose count. Every so often we stop taping because I slip down in my seat, out of the camera's frame, and they remind me to sit up. There's no way Mom would allow this, yet it's not altogether bad. It's nice to download my weird evening with Yvonne, minus my revelation regarding the sketches. I don't mention Alice, either, because it feels wrong to drag her into it. Once I start talking about Yvonne, I find myself warming to her. It seems like people should get to know her. I don't know why things turn in that direction, but once I start, I can't stop. Paula doesn't say much herself. In the interest of getting me home quickly, she will edit in her responses later, she says. They often do it that way.

At the end, I feel cleansed. When the man behind the camera says “And. We're. Out,” Paula leans forward to push hair from my face.

“You did good,” she says, closing a manila envelope of questions that I hadn't noticed until now. I remember the real reason I am here.

chat, play, more

And I scramble from my seat. And now I'm running from the studio, the battery pack dragging then falling on the ground, past the man with the gold tooth, and I don't know Paula's chasing me until I am standing in the parking lot and I realize I have no car.

“Let me call a car for you,” Paula says, brushing hair from her temples. “If you need help talking to your mother about this, our legal department is always on call.”

I shake my head violently. “No! It has to be me.”

“Listen, whatever you wish. But there is one more thing.” She shoves an envelope into my hand.

I open it slowly, as though the paper is coated with ricin. In my hands are receipts for four tickets, two for a flight departing from Logan Airport in Boston arriving at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, dated November 28, 2014, and two from Viru Viru back to Logan, dated December 28, 2014, in the names of Deborah Lapin and Olivia Lapin.

Liv neglected to mention she was traveling to South America, never mind missing school for a whole month.

“How did you get this?” I ask.

“That same whip-smart intern noticed that Deborah Lapin doesn't clear her browser history. Ever,” Paula says.

“What does it mean?” I whisper.

Paula shrugs. “It means they're leaving.”

It dawns on me that she no longer cares, because Liv and Deborah are not her story. I am, and I have proven more than enough. Paula turns on her snakeskin shoe and marches across the lobby.

I stare at the hacked ticket receipts incredulously as she turns and calls without looking back, “You did the right thing, Julia.”

*   *   *

Doing the right thing was unavoidable, since I pulled up to my front door in a town car.

I came clean immediately. Mom shook her finger, wordless, and then disappeared upstairs, speed-dialing Ricker. I trudged upstairs and collapsed on my bed with my coat and shoes still on. A bedroom away, I stared at the ceiling, counting the seconds until Mom came crashing through my wall like the Kool-Aid Guy, but angry.

She chose the door.

“What did Ricker suggest?” I said. “Am I past the point of being fixed by her traditional cognitive behavioral therapies? Are we moving toward electroshock therapy and a lobotomy?”

Mom's phone was still clamped in her fist. “Honestly, Julia! What were you thinking? Going to that house was so unsafe! There are ways to find closure besides talking to the mother of the man who—”

“The man I got away from. I was never in any danger from Mrs. Jessup. I even learned some things.” I patted the edge of my bed.

She sat, rigidly, clutching the phone as if it was a lifeline to Ricker. I saw everything on her face. Not just her worry about me that night, or over the last year, or when I was in the woods. Her worry for my whole future, all in the furrow of her brow and the downturn of her nose, and her sad, pretty mouth ridged like a clamshell on top. The black inside me uncoiled, and I remembered this was my mom, and she was warm, and she was that only thing I wanted when I was in the woods counting stars. I told myself it would help her to see that this interview wasn't about me at all, but about setting a system right. I was incidental, and incidental is safe.

I scooted over in my bed, and she slipped in beside me.

“If that Pantano guy had just done his job, none of this would have happened,” I said. “You can be mad at me. But aren't you mad at the cops, too? Even a little?”

She stared at the point where the ceiling met the wall. “I spend my time focusing on things we can control. Like press access to you.” She rolled over and propped up on her elbow. “Tomorrow, Dr. Ricker will come over, and we will sit around the kitchen table and you will explain to us, in detail, what you said to Paula Papademetriou, and more importantly, why.” Her eyes went clinical then, all reserve and scary control. No “Oh yeah!” Kool-Aid Guy; this was Mom as badass, a combination of Morgan le Fay and Gwen Stacy, her special brand of cool cerebral coping. “Then Dr. Ricker will suggest next actions. Those may include complaints against the reporter and the TV station; they will most certainly include some kind of consequences for you.”

“You're saying I'm grounded,” I said, pulling the comforter over my head.

It would be good, I thought, to stay in bed like that. Just a day or two to let the smoke clear, let Liv be confused, Kellan be incensed, Ricker be elegantly outraged at my disobedience. The only necessary ally is the person who gives me information, and that is Paula.

Still, the interview hadn't yet aired. In other words, the shit hadn't hit the fan.

But Mom wasn't through. “You still have not given me one logical reason for why you went to see Yvonne Jessup, and why you agreed to be interviewed by Paula Papademetriou,” she said.

I pulled the comforter down and folded my hands elaborately, buying time to think. I made steeples with my fingers and focused on the pink shadows inside. “I went to see Yvonne Jessup out of curiosity. For closure. Paula Papademetriou must have been driving by, or got some tip. She ambushed me. I gave her short answers; nothing I haven't said before. You would have been proud, actually.”

“You will lie low this weekend. I've invited Erik to come tomorrow and stay for a while.” Then she snuggled up against me, which was nice. “We could use the time together.”

I focused on my fingers. Normally I'd be wondering if “we” meant “three,” as in Mom, Erik, and me. But I wasn't. I was thinking about forgivenesses to be begged. Explanations to be made.