Twisted (12 page)

I existed on cruise control all weekend—home, bed, sleep, shower, looked at food, threw food out, bed again, stared at ceiling.

Nothing worked. The short independent
film Bethany Milbury Hates Tyler Miller
was playing on a constant loop in my head. I tried everything to drive it out: watched MTV, did a thousand jumping jacks and five hundred sit-ups, listened to music as loud as the volume dial would let me. I even tried beating my head against the wall. It left a dent, but it didn’t stop her voice mocking me, her fingers in his hair.

I didn’t bother with a jacket. If I was lucky, I’d catch pneumonia and die before dinner. As I walked through the gates of the Eternal Rest Cemetery, a flock of crows exploded out of a tree. It was just a matter of time before one of them dropped a depth charge on my head. I did not pull up the hood of my sweatshirt.

The crows followed me up the hill.

Grandpa Miller had been a traveling salesman, selling seeds and equipment to farmers. He got screwed out of a John Deere franchise back in 1965 and never got over it.

He picked out the plot himself, at the top of the hill. Grandma was not next to him. Forty years of marriage was bad enough, she said. She’d rather spend eternity alone.

The crows called back and forth. The trees shivered. The wind was blowing a cold front across the graves, preparing us for winter. When the nursing home called to tell Dad that Grandpa had finally died a couple years ago, he hung up the phone and said, “Thank God.”

I sat on the damp ground next to his grave. His stone was white as bone and as hard as he was. It was so freaking pathetic that this was the only place I could think of to visit.

I cried like maybe it might help something.

It didn’t.

By Monday morning I had almost convinced myself that a) it hadn’t happened, or b) if it had happened, everyone concerned was so drunk they wouldn’t remember, or c) if they remembered, they’d be too embarrassed to talk about it.

It’s going to be great; everything is fine. I’ll say something clever and witty to show that she hadn’t hurt me at all—no, that’s not my heart’s blood dripping on the floor. Bethany who? Yeah, she was hot for me, but I had to let her down gently. You know. She’s not really my type.

I cut homeroom.

A hall monitor caught me hiding in the men’s room and wrote me up.

In Calc we had a pop quiz, which we then got to trade with our “neighbor” for an instant jolt of public shame. I got a 37.

I kicked a soccer ball a little too hard in gym. It nailed some guy in the stomach and he had to go to the nurse. I didn’t do it on purpose, but the teacher still yelled at me.

Viral rumors about the party were incubating in the halls. They said a gang fight broke out. They said the house almost burned down. They said Bethany Milbury blew me off in a major way. They said I was one of the kids who went to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. They said Josh’s parents were sending him to military school.

They said there was another party, a bigger one, this coming Saturday.

My head hurt so much by the time English started, I had to keep it on my desk. Mr. Salvatore was not sympathetic. He was all fired up about a few papers that turned out to be word-for-word identical. I tried to listen but all I heard was “plagiarism,” “academic integrity,” and “cheating” fifty million times.

Nobody looked him in the eye.

When he had worked himself up to the point where it looked like he might punch the whiteboard, he handed back our papers, announcing who had earned zeroes because they cheated. I hadn’t copied my essay, honest. It compared the themes of
Paradise Lost to Crime and Punishment
and came in at exactly five hundred words.

He stood over me, essay in hand. I had a zero, too. “Time to start playing by college rules, Mr. Miller. You need to actually read the book before you pretend you know what it’s about.”

My mouth opened up before my brain kicked into gear. “In college the teachers don’t care if you show up to class as long as you pass the final. Do we get to play by that rule, too?”

The class went quiet.

Mr. Salvatore licked his lips. “Are you asking for detention, Mr. Miller?”

Choice: say “yes” and pay for it, or say “no” and look like a weenie.

“No.”

“Have your parents sign your paper. And don’t forge their signatures, okay? Be a man.”

I waited until he launched into a discussion about the layers of meaning in
Punishment,
then I raised my hand and said I felt sick. When I walked in the nurse’s office, the kid I hurt with the soccer ball (by accident, I swear, I swear) freaked out. The nurse gave me two Turns and a hall pass and made me leave.

The bell rang. Eleven o’clock and I’d already gone three rounds with a heavyweight without headgear. I cut lunch. I cut French, too.

Didn’t cut study hall. Not much point in that. I sat next to the window and watched the wind stripping leaves off the trees.

The attendance office called me down at the end of the period. I was hoping that they’d punish me by chopping off my head in the courtyard, but no. I was instructed to serve detention for cutting my morning classes.

I ran into Bethany as I came out of the office. Literally. The bell had rung, the halls were packed, and I misjudged my entry into the traffic flow. We smacked into each other right in front of the glass walls. She dropped her books, and I bent down to pick them up before it registered what I was doing.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah.” I handed the books to her.

She turned her head away. “Thanks. See ya.”

They were watching, the kids who fed the rumor mill. I should have walked away right then, right there. If we had been alone, maybe I would have. But they were watching.

“See ya.”

I was a train wreck with a runaway mouth.

“Did you have a good time at the party?” I called.

She clutched her books tightly and walked down the hall.

I followed. “I mean, what was it you loved the most? Was it drinking yourself blind or throwing yourself on every guy there?”

She sped up, bumping into people at their lockers.

“How many guys did you drag upstairs, huh?” My voice cracked.

Bethany did a one-eighty in the middle of the hall and headed back the direction we came from. “Leave me alone,” she said loudly.

“That’s not what you said Friday night!”

“Leave me alone!”

People were openly staring, circling, taking bets.

Chip Milbury peeled off a group of guys coming out of the stairwell by the office. He looked at me, at his sister, then back at me again. “What’s going on?”

Bethany ran over to him and said something under her breath. Chip glared at me. “Where do you get off talking to my sister like that?”

Mr. Hughes stepped out of the office. The voices in the hall died down. “Is there a problem here?”

“This guy is harassing Bethany,” Chip said.

Mr. Hughes motioned to the crowd. “Go on, everyone, that was the bell. Nothing is happening here. Move along. You three, get to class. We’ll sort this out later.”

I caught a glimpse of Bethany’s face just then. There were tears in her eyes, real tears, because I had hurt her, I had been a jerk, I was scum. She wiped the tears away with the palm of her hand and disappeared down the hall.

I went to Hell right after dinner.

Level Twenty-Nine and rapidly descending. Like most games, Tophet was a test. You had to suffer through weeks of mind-numbing boredom on the early levels to get to the real deal. I was ready.

Gormley had finally stolen enough of Mammon’s fortune that he could buy the protection he needed to blast through the Shields of Moloch. If this kept up, I’d be battling the Lord of Darkness within days.

Hannah burst into my room, shoved me off my keyboard, and opened a browser window.

“Hey!” I said. “I’m about to napalm a horde of succubus.”

She concentrated on typing. “Shut up and watch.” She hit the ENTER key and stood back.

The browser screen went black for a second, then three small photos popped up, and above them, the word
SLUT.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Take a deep breath, Tyler.” She clicked on the first photo and it enlarged.

Bethany. My Bethany. The quality of the picture was poor, but that was definitely her face. It was Bethany on a bed, wearing that little leaf skirt from her Halloween costume and a bra. That was all she was wearing. No tights, no sweatshirt. No wings. She was curled up in a ball, her hair spread out on the pillow, her eyes closed.

Hannah clicked on the next photo.

Almost the same pose, except the bra was missing.

“Oh, God,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” she said grimly. She clicked.

I only looked for a second, but I’d never forget. It was her and she was naked, turned on her side so that some things were covered by shadows. Her eyes were closed. A guy’s hand was at the side of the shot, reaching for her butt.

“Who did this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Call Yoda. He’ll figure it out.”

“Why do you care?” she asked. “I thought she blew you off.”

“How do you know that?”

“Dude, she told the whole world.”

I clicked on the browser window to close it. “How’d you find this?”

“Somebody IMed me the link.” Hannah stood up. “Sucks to be her.”

Bethany did not go to school on Tuesday.

They said she did the whole team. It didn’t matter the sport. The whole team.

They said she posed.

They said there was a secret Web site that showed every girl at the party on that bed.

They said it was a hoax.

They said the FBI was investigating.

They said she was dead.

They said she engineered the whole thing herself to get into
Playboy.

Or to get out of midterms.

They said she drank so much that she fried her brain and was on life support.

They said she left the party in an ambulance.

They said she had it coming.

They said her brother was going to kill whoever took the pictures. He wasn’t in school on Tuesday, either.

I tried. I butted my way into conversations all day long, in the halls, lunch line, at the urinals. I wrote notes. I whispered during the alienation lecture in English. I was yelled at in French, in French. I told everyone that I drove Bethany home. I said she was with me all night long. I said the whole thing had to be fake.

By the end of the day, they were saying that I did it.

They called me down first period on Wednesday.

I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have. Wouldn’t have. No way. No how.

I kept telling myself that over and over as I walked to my doom, to Mr. Hughes’s office. Every door I passed was open. Thousands of eyes watched me.

I did it, they said. I couldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have. But I was the one who destroyed the school. No. No, I didn’t. It was just some spray paint. And I did not take her picture. God, if I had I wouldn’t have shown it to anyone. I’d never put it on the Net. I mean, I’d thought about her looking like that, lying like that. But no. I did not take a picture. And I didn’t destroy the school, either. It was just spray paint.

Mr. Hughes’s mouth moved, chewing through the air and the seriousness of the situation. I nodded when I was supposed to nod and shook my head when that seemed like the right thing to do. No, I didn’t know anything about this, no sir, not a thing. I couldn’t have done it, sir.

I did not hurt Bethany. I knew that.

But nobody else did.

They said I was taken out of school in handcuffs again, but that should show you they didn’t know squat. I went home, normal time, in Yoda’s car. Yoda spent the whole ride home BSing me with one hundred reasons why nobody thought I pornogrified the girl of my dreams.

The cops showed up at eight thirty that night, just as Dad was about to eat the reheated leftover take-out enchiladas. I was watching television with Mom. Hannah was the one who sprinted to the answer the doorbell.

“The police are here,” she said.

“What?” Mom asked.

I looked in the kitchen. Dad was at the table, his briefcase open on the chair next to him. He had some papers in one hand and a forkful of enchilada in the other.

He dropped the fork. “Don’t let them in!” he said.

“What’s going on?” Mom asked.

Dad pushed away from the table and went to the door. “Everybody stay there.”

Hannah sat down on the couch without looking at me. I studied the rug. If I could tear through it with my bare hands, then rip through the wood underneath, I could squeeze through the hole in the floor, drop down to the basement, wiggle out one of the tiny basement windows (maybe), and take off before the cops even got inside.

Dad walked back in. “Hannah, go upstairs. Linda, Tyler, come with me.”

We sat in the living room, the room in which no living was ever done except for dusting the piano, vacuuming the lemon-colored carpet, and entertaining people we didn’t like. Police officers, for example.

Officer Adams walked like his feet hurt. He was Dad’s age, but he still had his hair. He was taller than Dad but looked underfed and tired. Mr. Benson, my probation officer, was with him. The look he gave me when he walked in the door made me want to dig a hole through the floor again.

Mom’s smile looked like the kind you see on a mummy, when the skin has shrunk so far you can see the teeth and gums. She was having a hard time speaking.

“Have a seat, gentlemen,” Dad said.

Adams and Benson sat in the white, stuffed chairs. Mom and Dad sat on the couch under the framed print of
The Starry Night.
I sat on the piano bench. Hannah was sitting on the stairs, just high enough that Mom and Dad couldn’t see her.

Dad opened his mouth, but Officer Adams jumped in first. “I know you folks must be nervous.”

Mom squeaked. Dad put his hand on top of hers and patted it.

“But,” Adams continued, “we’re just looking for information.”

That was cop-speak for “we have all of the information we need to send your son away to federal penitentiary for twenty years, but we’ll save the taxpayers a lot of money if we can squeeze a confession out of him right here.”

“Of course,” Dad said.

“We’re investigating an incident that took place at a party Friday night. A young woman, apparently under the influence of alcohol and or drugs, was stripped naked and photographed. Those pictures were then posted to the Internet.”

Mom tried to squeak again, but no sound came out.

“That’s a terrible thing,” Dad said. “But I fail to see any connection to our family. Tyler wasn’t at any party. He’s still under the curfew imposed by the judge in May.”

Mr. Benson’s eyes darted to me. I wondered if it would be possible to crawl into the piano and close the lid. Maybe the wires would cut me into hundreds of pieces and I would bleed out before anyone noticed.

Adams nodded. “Well, sir, we’re at the beginning of this investigation, but it’s clear that your son was indeed at the party, according to”–he paused to flip through the pages of his notebook—“according to seven witnesses. Your daughter, Hannah, was there, too.”

There was the sound of clumping feet running up the stairs, down the hall, and then a door slamming.

“Ah,” Dad said.

Adams turned to me. “You were at the party, right, Tyler?”

I nodded.

“And by that nod, you mean yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

He asked a bunch of boring questions—how did I hear about the party
(everybody knew about it),
how much did I drink
(one sip doesn’t count),
how much did I smoke (nothing), how many people were there
(lost count),
how did I get there
(walked).

“You walked?” Benson interrupted.

“Yes, sir.”

“We don’t let him drive anymore,” Mom explained.

Adams cleared his throat and turned the page in his notebook. “In which room did you take the photographs?”

“I didn’t take any pictures,” I said.

“In which room did you have sex with Bethany Milbury?”

Crapcrapcrap.

“We didn’t have sex.”

“Bethany Milbury!” Dad roared. “Is that who we’re talking about? Christ Almighty, Tyler, what were you thinking?”

“Please, Mr. Miller,” Benson said. “Sit down.”

“Would you like a minute to compose yourself?” Adams asked.

“No,” barked Dad. Wisps of smoke trailed out of his nose and mouth as he sat. “Go on.”

“Did you go into a bedroom with Bethany?”

The sound of metal doors locking.
“Yes.”

“Were you alone in the room with her?”

Older inmates. Big, older inmates. With gang tattoos.
“Yes.”

“Was she drunk?”

“She had a beer in her hand. I got there late. I don’t know how much she had to drink.”

“What happened when the two of you were alone in the bedroom?”

I looked down. The laces of my sneakers were frayed. “We talked, mostly. I was at the party because she invited me. I thought…I thought she liked me. So we talked.”

Adams was staring at me. “What kind of physical contact did you have with her?”

My mother was sitting very still.

“Tyler?” Adams repeated.

“Not much.” I cleared my throat. “She came on to me—we kissed. She wanted to do more, but I didn’t. I mean, no, I did, but I didn’t, not like that, not there, not when she was—”

“Drunk?” Adams asked.

“Yeah. Drunk. So I blew her off and she got mad. She said some bitchy things and took off. I didn’t see her until the party ended.” I explained where I found her and how she was dressed. Mom stopped looking at me. Dad didn’t.

Adams finished writing and spent a long minute reviewing his notes. “How long have you been stalking her?”

“What?” I looked up. “I haven’t been stalking her. I was trying to protect her. The only reason I stayed was to keep an eye on her because everybody was so trashed.”

“If you were keeping an eye on her,” Benson interrupted, “then how did those pictures get taken?”

Adams waved him off. “Were you responsible for a serious accident on August the twenty-eighth, during which Bethany suffered severe lacerations on the bottom of her foot, which necessitated a trip to the hospital and multiple stitches?”

“It was an accident!” My voice was panicked. I had no control over it. “Chip shoved me. I couldn’t help it.”

“Did you verbally harass her in school on Monday afternoon?”

“Who told you that?”

“That’s enough, Tyler,” Dad said. “Settle down.”

Benson closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Are you going to arrest my son?” Dad asked.

“Not tonight,” Adams said. “But when we do, he’s looking at felony charges that could include lewd behavior, forcible touching, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, all kinds of voyeurism counts, and possibly a kidnapping charge.”

Kidnapping?
I couldn’t even get the word out.

“Okay, good job,” Dad said. “You’ve terrified him—congratulations. We both know you can lie about anything you want right now, so let’s cut to it. What evidence do you have?”

“We’ve talked to a number of students—”

“Ev-i-dence,”
Dad said slowly. His yellow dragon eyes flashed at Adams. “Aside from rumors spread by drunken morons, what makes you believe my son did anything beside break curfew?”

“Did Bethany accuse Tyler?” Mom asked. “Was she–?”

Adams thought for a moment before he answered. “There is no medical evidence that she has ever had intercourse. And she claims her memory of the incident is spotty. We’re starting with the photographs.”

It hit me. “I don’t have a camera,” I said. “How could I take her picture without a camera?”

“We believe the photographs were taken with a camera phone,” Adams said.

“Tyler doesn’t have a phone,” Mom said.

“He doesn’t?” Adams asked.

“We took it away when the first thing happened,” Mom explained.

“He could have used anyone’s phone,” Adams said. “We’re investigating the possibility of coconspirators.”

Dad interrupted. “But the point is you have no evidence. I want to see this Web site.”

“It’s been taken down, Mr. Miller. It was up for approximately four hours.”

“So how do you know that a crime was even committed?”

“Numerous students printed the images.”

Ouch.

“We’d like to borrow Tyler’s computer,” Adams said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Our experts will be able to tell if your computer was used to upload, store, or download the images.”

“I didn’t. I mean, Hannah showed me the site last night; you’ll see that in the browser history. But I didn’t do it. My computer will prove it, so yeah, take it.”

“How do we know you won’t set him up?” Dad asked. “What if you guys think he is the easiest kid to nail for this, and you’ll doctor his computer to prove it?”

“I can come back with a warrant,” Adams said.

This is not happening. My dad is not going toe-to-toe with a cop, defending me like he cares. I am not a suspect. Nobody did anything criminal to Bethany. In fact, the party never happened.

“I’ll take you to his room,” Dad said.

I stayed on the bench while Dad supervised the removal of my computer. Mr. Benson carried it, component by component, to the squad car while Adams interviewed Hannah in her room, with Mom standing guard. Hannah was bawling. She always cried when she got caught.

As Adams and Benson pulled out of the driveway, Dad watched through the living-room curtains. I hadn’t moved. Mom was still upstairs with Hannah, who had cranked it up to a full-blown wail.

I knew what was coming.

Dad snapped the curtains shut. He stood in the middle of the lemon-yellow carpet, opened his jaws, and sprayed fire everywhere. I was a loser, a liar, a jerk, an idiot, a disgrace, and an embarrassment. I had cost the family a fortune in lawyer’s fees already. I had ruined the family’s good name, my father could barely hold his head up at work, and now this—

Breathe. Breathe.

“—this is the last straw, Tyler. Brice Milbury will fire me and blacken my name. I’ve worked twenty-seven years to get where I am, and you just blew it all to hell, because you had a hard-on for some drunken little bitch.”

“Don’t call her that,” I said.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you! I never thought I’d say this, but I wish you took drugs. If you were high, I could blame it on that. But no, you screw up just for the joy of it—”

I tuned out again. He kept at it for another hour or so, flapping his wings and tearing at the sky with his talons. He was done with me. Done. If they arrested me, he’d kick me out of the house. He blamed me for Mom’s migraines and his blood pressure. He blamed me for my bad grades, my bad attitude, and my bad haircut. I was also responsible for the price of gas, global warming, and the national debt.

My butt fell asleep. That piano bench was hard. No wonder Hannah and I quit lessons when we were little. As he paced back and forth, I studied the family Christmas photos behind him, and the spots where the wallpaper seams had separated.

The furnace kicked on, blowing that faint moldy smell across the vacuum-cleaner lines at the edge of the lemon-yellow carpet, across the strings inside the piano, across the laces of my sneakers.

Dad’s nose twitched. He stuttered once, then shouted, “Go to your room!”

I stopped in the upstairs bathroom, popped four ibuprofen, and chugged half a bottle of NyQuil. Then I went to bed like the bad little boy I was.