We Know It Was You (2 page)

The woods, 9:12 p.m.

When something strange happens, particularly in a crowd, the average person will immediately lose the ability to focus their senses. Things that should be obvious become obscured by the disorder of excitement.
It all happened so fast,
people always say. But it doesn't have to be this way, Benny knew. Not if your brain can be faster.

“Following the leader, the leader, the leader!”

There was pandemonium in the forest. Benny had followed the mascot, the cheerleaders had followed Benny, and the football players had followed the cheerleaders. Someone had begun to sing “Following the Leader,” and soon everyone was singing it.
“We're following the leader wherever he may go!”
Benny tromped through the underbrush, eager to get away from the noise. As he moved farther into the woods, the chorus echoed behind him, no longer jolly-sounding, but eerie and distorted.
“We're following the leeeeeeader . . .”

The mascot was here, Benny was sure of it, but he'd lost her. He spun in circles, looking, listening. But the throng was catching up with him again, engulfing the quiet with their annoying singing.

Then he saw it: a great, lumbering shadow moving in the darkness toward . . .

The bridge
.

This section of the river was called the White Bend for a reason. It surged past the school in a great gush, its cold white water frothing over the jutting rocks and cutting a deep, dangerous forty-foot ravine. A one-hundred-year-old footbridge stood tenuously across it, connecting the campus to a black patch of forest on the other side. The bridge wasn't very safe. The rails were low, and the drop was deadly. It wasn't a question of drowning—it was breaking your neck and your skull on the massive, slick rocks. Benny
remembered some kids getting drunk and falling to their deaths a few years ago. But since they weren't Winship students, the response had been minimal. Winship was a snobbish old place, not likely to sink a bunch of money into ruining a historic bridge just because some no-name townies couldn't handle themselves. But this was no townie, it was Brittany Montague—the prize of the school—and Benny stared as she began crossing the bridge, pausing at the center to lean perilously over the rail.

What is she doing?
he thought.
She's going to fall.

But she didn't fall. She jumped.

Benny watched, frozen, as the mascot flipped head over heels and plummeted toward the rushing water. In seconds she was gone.

The bridge, 9:20 p.m.

“We're following the leader wherever he may go!”
The throng had swarmed the bridge, singing and yelling. Benny located one of the coaches, the one with the bushy white mustache, and tried to explain what had happened. “It was Brittany! I saw her jump,” he shouted, fighting to be heard above the raucous din.

“What, son? What? You need to get back to the field. Everyone get back to the field!”

Benny didn't know exactly how it happened, but within minutes everyone seemed to have heard. Brittany Montague had jumped off the bridge in her mascot costume. The
mood changed instantly. The singing morphed into wails and sobs. Benny found himself crammed against the bridge railing, the crowd swelling dangerously.
It's going to collapse,
he thought. He looked down at the gushing river below and felt momentarily dizzy.

“Benny. Benny!” A hand grabbed his arm. It was Virginia.

“Virginia. Oh my God. I saw—”

“I saw it too!” she shouted. “I can't believe it!”

Next to them, Angie Montague was leaning over the rail, sobbing. “I dropped my pom-poms!” she cried, reaching toward the watery abyss. “I DROPPED MY POM-POMS!”

Virginia burst out laughing. Luckily the scene was so chaotic that only Benny noticed. “Stop laughing,” Benny hissed at her. “She's obviously traumatized.”

“Well so am I!” Virginia yelled. “I just witnessed a suicide!”

“I did too,” Benny snapped back, “but I'm managing to not be an imbecile about it.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Virginia said. “It was a nervous reaction.”

“There she is!” a girl shrieked behind them, pointing downriver. Benny squinted and saw the mascot floating facedown in the dark water, gliding like a ghost. It sank, then the water heaved it up again. Then it disappeared around the bend.

“Christ, let's get off this bridge!” Virginia shouted.

They were pinned in on either side by sobbing people. He could hear the coaches yelling at everyone to calm
down. Benny craned his neck, trying to see a way out, but the bridge was impossibly crowded.

“Look,” Virginia said, pointing her finger toward the dark forest.

“God, somebody's elbow is digging into my spine.”

“Benny,
look
.” She grabbed his jaw and forcibly turned his face.

“I don't see anything. Let go of—” Then he saw it. A tiny, tiny speck of red light. At first it looked like a burning cigarette. Then he realized what it was: a camera.

Somebody is recording this
.

Virginia began elbowing people left and right. She pushed over two sobbing girls, accidentally stepping on one. Benny followed as she wormed her way off the bridge, shoving stupefied football players, brushing past the frantic coaches who continued to scream at everyone to get back to the field. Virginia's pushiness had always annoyed him, but in this case it was proving useful. There was no way Benny could have elbowed his way off this bridge on his own.

As soon as they reached the shadowy trees, Benny broke into a sprint.

“Whoever it is,” Benny shouted back to Virginia, “just tackle them. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Virginia answered, though truthfully, she didn't know. She'd never tackled anyone before.

But it turned out she didn't have to. Because when they
arrived at the site of the tiny red light, no one was there. It was just a small camera on the ground, recording everything.

The Boarders, 10:30 p.m.

Virginia rooted around in the common-room refrigerator, looking for something exotic and interesting to offer Benny. Surely there was a mango in there, or some seaweed or something. But all she could find were reduced-fat cheese slices and some old turkey rolls.

“Mom, I'm fine. I'm at the Boarders with Virginia. . . . Yes, her.”

Virginia flinched at the way he said “her.” Clearly Mrs. Flax wasn't her biggest fan.

“I don't know, maybe eleven thirty? We have . . . homework. Mom, stop; we're just friends.”

Virginia slammed the refrigerator door shut.

“Mom, please? I'll unload the dishwasher. I'll take Grandma to synagogue. . . . Okay. Love you too. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut. “Sorry about that. My mom's picking me up at eleven thirty. Is that enough time?”

Virginia checked the computer, glad for an excuse not to look at Benny. Her cheeks felt hot, and she knew she was probably blushing. It wasn't a sweet or coquettish look on her; it made her look angry. “I don't know,” she said. “Depends on how much footage there is on the camera.”

There was a small echo to her voice. All the rooms in the Boarders echoed, because they were always empty. The
Boarders was a neglected old building at the edge of campus where the resident students lived. Winship Academy used to be a boarding school back in the sixties and seventies. But the residence program was being gradually phased out, and now there were only about two dozen boarders in the entire school. Every year the trustees threatened to cut the program entirely. It created a weird distance between the regular students and the boarders, like it wasn't worth getting too attached to them, because at any moment they could disappear.

Benny wasn't sure exactly what Virginia's deal was. He knew she usually went to Florida during school holidays, but he never got the feeling that she was actually
from
Florida, only that Florida was where she went. Maybe her family had a beach house or something. He'd never asked. It seemed rude to pry into the boarders' home situations. There was probably something dysfunctional about them, or else why would they be here?

He and Virginia sat side by side on a pair of wheeled desk chairs, waiting for the common room's ancient computer to buzz to life.

There was a soft, low whistle above their heads. They both looked up.

“That's it,” Virginia said, pointing to the ceiling. “Do you hear it?”

There was a ghost living in the attic—at least that's what all the boarders thought. Virginia had been trying
to get Benny to investigate it for weeks, but he was always reluctant. Investigating a ghost was way too much like a
Scooby-Doo!
episode, and he didn't want to encourage any more comparisons. And anyway there was no ghost, just scuttling squirrels and the whistle of wind and the magnolia tree casting twisted shadows. And the boarders below padding around like ghosts themselves, probably wishing there
were
a ghost so that they could have some company.

“Hm,” Benny grunted, uninterested.

Virginia connected the camera to the computer and stared at the little icon that indicated the video was loading. She gave Benny a quick glance. He looked so dorky and serious in his voluminous turtleneck, but actually he was kind of a rebel. Back in the woods, he'd just grabbed the camera and breezed past the throng of police officers who had descended upon the scene. She'd seen enough
SVU
to know that this was tampering with evidence, but Benny didn't seem to care. She knew he didn't like the police—something to do with his childhood dog? She didn't know the whole story. Old Virginia could have wheedled it out of him in no time, but new Virginia wasn't obsessed with people's weird dog traumas.

“It has a bar code,” Benny said, pointing to the bottom of the camera. “I think it's from the library.”

Virginia opened a viewer on the computer and pressed play. A bright, white-and-gray room filled the screen. At
the edge of the frame they could make out the brown fur of Brittany's mascot costume beside the camera.

“It's the locker room,” Virginia said, surprised. She'd expected the footage to begin at the bridge.

There was giggling, and a pair of white-and-blue pom-poms sailed across the screen. Then a girl appeared in a pink bra and shorts with the word
PRINCESS
across the butt. The camera angle raised slowly, surreptitiously, showing her face. Blond hair, radiant skin, faintly flushing cheeks. It was Angie Montague.

“Brittany, get off your ass,” Angie was saying, swiping her pom-poms toward the camera. Another cheerleader bounced into the frame for a second, carrying a pink Gatorade. She was completely naked.

“Oh my God,” Benny said, quickly covering his eyes. “They don't know there's a camera.”

Virginia stared at the screen. “Omigod. Corny Davenport's boobs are gigantic. She must wear like ten bras to keep those puppies down.” It was the exact kind of tidbit that would have exploded in the old days on Winship Confidential.

“What else is happening?” Benny asked, still covering his eyes.

“Um . . .” Virginia squinted at the screen. “They're just, you know, bouncing around. They're changing into their uniforms.”

“Are they still naked?”

“Yep.”

Benny could hear giggling and locker doors opening and slamming. He knew he should open his eyes. He didn't want Virginia to think he was a pervert, but he couldn't trust her not to miss something important.

About a dozen cheerleaders were bouncing into and out of the frame in various stages of undress. The lens slowly zoomed in and out, showcasing whichever girl happened to be the most naked. One girl had a large powder puff of glitter and began patting it up and down the long, smooth limbs of the other girls, until their skin shimmered and clouds of glitter formed in the air around their bodies. The dingy locker room was suddenly transformed into an ethereal place where the beauty of the girls was so magical it caused the atmosphere to literally sparkle.

Benny realized his mouth was hanging open slightly. He snapped it shut. It felt very wrong to be watching incredibly beautiful naked girls when someone was dead and he was supposed to be figuring out why. He wished he didn't have to watch this in front of Virginia. It was so awkward he felt almost ill.

“Is Brittany obsessed with boobs or something?” Virginia said loudly. “Why would she need to record them? She can see them in the locker room every day.”

“Maybe the tape was for someone else,” Benny answered, not looking at her. “The football players. Or some voyeur website.”

“Putting her own cheerleading squad on the Internet?” Virginia said. “That's pretty messed up.”

Benny shrugged. People
were
pretty messed up; it didn't surprise him.

“Here we go,” Virginia announced. The video moved jerkily out of the locker room and onto the brightly lit football field. An enormous shout rose up from the bleachers as cheerleaders skipped past the camera, waving their pom-poms and doing cartwheels. Occasionally the image was blocked out by the large furry arm of Brittany's mascot costume.

“I wonder if the camera was sewn into the costume,” Virginia said. “She may not have known it was there.”

“No, she knew,” Benny said. “She's using the zoom button. She's getting specific shots. It's probably why she got a real camera instead of just using her phone.”

For a long time the camera was very still, pointing inertly at the football field. In the background, the pep band played an abysmal rendition of “We Will Rock You.” The two teams scuttled back and forth, first in one direction, then in the opposite direction. Was there a stupider game than football?

“Look at that dope Gerard,” Virginia said. “Could he be any more obvious? He's been gaping at Angie the entire game.”