We Know It Was You (5 page)

Gottfried and Corn Flakes had this elaborate high five they gave each other, which struck me as interesting because I didn't think they hung out all that much. But maybe it's just one of those high fives that all dudes preternaturally know. I will investigate this and report back.

She folded up the paper and went to the common-room computer to google “guy high fives.” The results were pretty useless, like guys high-fiving their dogs or accidentally smacking each other in the faces. She came up with a great plan to ascertain whether the high five was a standard dude one or unique to Gottfried and Corn Flakes: She'd
wait for Gottfried to come back in the hope that they would do the high five again, but this time she'd be waiting with the camera. She'd film the high five, study it, and practice it until she could do it perfectly. Then she'd go up to Gottfried and do it, and if he was incredibly shocked, she'd know the handshake was personal between him and Corn Flakes.

And then what?
she thought, suddenly discouraged.
What would that even prove? That Gottfried and Corn Flakes were buds? So what? Total myopic fixation.

“Myopic fixation” was what Benny called Virginia's principal weakness as an investigator. She'd looked up “myopic” in the dictionary; it meant being shortsighted. And “fixated” meant being obsessed. Together they meant a tendency to get sidetracked by small details.

Zoom out,
she thought, and found herself envisioning the Earth from outer space.
Christ, not that far,
she told herself. She closed her eyes. What did football, boobs, and a German exchange student have in common?

She sighed, opening her eyes. She just wasn't good at seeing the big picture. All she saw was a big blank.

Virginia closed the Google tab and folded her pathetically inadequate field report on Gottfried. Then she left the common room and went back to her hall. A pair of white-and-blue pom-poms was lying in a fluffy pile next to one of the doors.
Her
door. Virginia looked around. The pom-poms hadn't been there before. Someone must have
dropped them there while she was in the common room.

There was a Post-it note stuck to the door, written with messy handwriting in blue ballpoint pen:

You left these in my car. Hope your OK

Chrissie White was the only cheerleader in the Boarders; someone must have mixed up Virginia's room with hers. Virginia picked up the pom-poms and crossed the hall to knock on Chrissie's door. Virginia and Chrissie hadn't talked in ages, though they used to be best friends. Chrissie was a total social climber, which Virginia could have respected if she weren't so bad at it. She got way too drunk at parties, gave blow jobs to the wrong guys, and then bragged about it to the wrong girls. And the fact that she'd started snubbing Virginia was proof that she had zero sense of social strategy. Not that Virginia cared anymore. She had her own reputation rehab to deal with, which was challenging enough without getting sucked into Chrissie's downward spiral.

The door cracked open. “What?” Chrissie's voice was small, and she looked like she'd been crying. She was still wearing her nightgown even though the afternoon was half over.

“Someone left these at my door,” Virginia said, handing her the pom-poms.

Chrissie wiped her nose on the sleeve of her nightgown. “These aren't mine. They're Corny's.”

“Oh. How can you tell?”

“They have glitter on the handles. Corny puts glitter on everything.” Chrissie sighed sadly, as if everything—even glitter—was ugly and meaningless now that Brittany was gone.

“Oh . . . ,” Virginia said. “Well, someone left them at my door. Will you take them?”

“Sure,” Chrissie sighed again. Then she closed the door, presumably to resume weeping in her nightie.

Virginia stood in the hall for a second. Who was clueless enough to think Corny Davenport lived in the Boarders? None of the really popular girls were resident students; they were all Atlanta-born-and-bred types whose parents had also gone to Winship back in the day. Winship had a reputation for being one of the more cliquish schools, which its students wore like a badge of honor. Everyone knew where everyone belonged. And in no universe did Corny Davenport's pom-poms belong at the Boarders.

Virginia turned and crossed the hall and opened the door of her room. The air felt different inside, muggy and sticky. Was her window open? She looked; it was closed. But the air was thick and smelled like the magnolia tree outside. She gave the window a closer look. There were smudges from fingertips at the bottom of the glass. She pressed her own hand on the window next to them. She held it there a second, then drew it away.

“What the hell . . .”

Side by side, the smudges weren't the same.

Someone else had been in her room.

Sunday

The fountain, 8:10 p.m.

The dusk light glowed with a hundred twinkling flames. It would have been romantic if not for the cloud of death hanging over everyone's heads. Corny Davenport reached for her boyfriend's hand, but he seemed reluctant to touch her. He fiddled with his candle, pretending to be distracted by a drip of wax. He was obviously embarrassed. Corny wished he would relax and submit to being comforted by her. They were sixteen; no one expected them to be strong.

“Hold my hand,” Corny whispered to him. Winn looked over his shoulder first, checking if anyone was looking. Corny felt a twinge of irritation, but it only lasted a second.
Poor Winn,
she thought. He didn't know how to deal with death. None of them did. They especially didn't know how to deal with suicide. Everyone had some crazy explanation for why Brittany jumped, mostly involving the supernatural: The mascot costume was cursed because the football team lost to Lowell four years in a row; the bridge
was cursed because those kids who'd died a few years ago had been Satanists.

Why is it easier to believe in curses than to believe that a cheerleader could have depression?
Corny thought. Being a cheerleader could be very depressing! You were responsible for the happiness of the entire school! Which was a hard job when the football team was having a terrible season, and it was raining a lot, and Lillian Davis's grandfather died so they couldn't have parties at his plantation anymore, and it was just generally not being the greatest year. Everyone leaned on the cheerleaders to keep their spirits up, and clearly Brittany had collapsed from the pressure.

The whole thing gave Corny a sad, motherly feeling, like she wanted to scoop up the entire school into a big hug. She was always hugging people—it's why everyone called her Corny. Her real name was Courtney Anne, but Corny fit her personality; she was a completely sentimental dork. And she'd never felt so purely in her element as she did at that moment. Everyone was vulnerable; everyone needed a hug. She'd given at least a hundred hugs today and felt like she could give a hundred more. Especially to Winn, who really needed one, even if he wouldn't admit it.

“It isn't fair!” one of the cheerleaders was moaning. “Heaven is full of angels! Why did they need to take Brittany, too?” Then she began crying bitterly. Corny spotted her like a hawk, swooping upon the needy soul to envelop her in a deep, warm hug.

Winn wiped his hand on his pants. His palm had been sweating for a while, and he'd been wishing Corny would let go of it. But as soon as she was gone, he almost immediately wished she would come back. It made him twitchy and jealous, the way she smothered other people with attention. It was embarrassing, and it undermined him as her boyfriend. All Winn's teammates on the football team had an exact idea of her body, because she was always affectionately plastering herself on them, pressing her huge, pillowy boobs against their broad chests. Sometimes she even hugged them when they were sitting down, which was pretty much just smashing her boobs in their faces. Winn was always scanning the crotches of his friends to see if they got hard-ons when she jumped on them. It was a gross, paranoid habit, but Winn told himself he was doing it to protect her. Corny was kind of clueless. Actually she was a lot like Brittany in that way. And it was easy to take advantage of girls like that. Girls who didn't understand the power of their bodies.

8:30 p.m.

Benny squeezed his way into the crowd. It was unclear who had organized the vigil, but now almost the entire high school was gathered together holding candles and crying. Bouquets of flowers had been tossed in a disorganized pile around the gurgling fountain, which looked less like a scene of mourning than a pile of pleasantly scented garbage.
Everyone was waving pictures of Brittany on their phones, adding to the weird glow. No one had bothered to print out pictures, no one except Benny anyway. He quickly folded his up and hid it in his pocket, not wanting to stand out. He and Virginia weren't there to grieve; they were there to observe.

“Do you see Angie?” Benny asked. “Or Gottfried?”

Virginia scanned the crowd. “No . . . But Angie may be in the middle of that bunch of cheerleaders.” They were all wearing their uniforms, as if they hadn't changed since the game Friday night. Maybe they hadn't. Virginia pushed through the crowd toward the cheerleaders, careful not to catch her hair on fire from all the carelessly bobbing candles. The cheerleaders' weeping sounds were soft, unlike their hysteria on the bridge. They were probably exhausted from crying for two days straight.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You gotta be a Wildcat to cheer with us,” a pair of cheerleaders chanted in a weepy whisper. Virginia looked at them.

“Could y'all not do that?” she said loudly. “It's kind of creepy.”

The girls glared at her, and then turned their backs and kept chanting.

“Don't talk to anyone,” Benny told her. “Just be in the space.”

He'd never seen this many people packed around the fountain. Apparently it was Brittany's favorite place to
eat lunch. There were already rumors of deliberations to rename the area Brittany Park, which Benny suspected had more to do with obfuscating a certain decrepit old bench under the magnolia tree. The bench had been erected in the sixties as a scanty peace offering to the first black students to desegregate Winship. It had not been a smooth transition, and now the bench was a daily reminder of a very embarrassing period in the school's history. While the trustees couldn't actually remove the bench without drawing further attention to it, renaming the entire area Brittany Park would at least overshadow it. Better to remember Brittany Montague—sweet, shining Brittany—than some fraught, bitter time that just made everyone uncomfortable.

“Stop blowing out your candle,” someone behind Benny was saying.

“I'm not blowing it out. It was the breeze.”

“You just did! You blew it out!”

Benny turned around. It was Winn and Corny, the junior class couple. They'd been together since the sixth grade. Everyone envied them, but Benny thought it was weird. Kissing someone you kissed when they were eleven was kind of abnormal. And besides, Benny knew Winn was a creep even if no one else saw it.

Corny was lighting his candle. Winn immediately blew it out again.

“Is this a trick candle or something?” Winn said,
sounding really annoyed. “How did I get a trick candle?”

“You're blowing it out,” Corny insisted. “I just saw you. Benny, didn't you see it?”

“Um, I guess,” Benny said. “Have y'all seen Angie? Is she here?”

“I don't think so. . . . Winn, seriously, stop blowing out your candle.”

“She's over there,” Benny heard. He turned around and saw Zaire Bollo. He was surprised he hadn't noticed her—Zaire tended to make herself known. She was imperious and a little stuck-up, in a way that was sort of similar to Virginia, but somehow Zaire pulled it off better. A matter of stage presence, Benny guessed. Composure. And the fact that she looked like a model, with the kind of face you'd find etched into the wall of a pharaoh's tomb.

She was pointing to the bench under the magnolia tree. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Benny could suddenly make out a person lying in a ball, tangled blond hair catching a small bit of light. He could tell she was crying.

“Why isn't anyone helping her?” Benny asked.

“I dunno.” Zaire shrugged. “I guess we're the only ones who see her.”

Benny stood there for a second, staring at the dark lump shrouded in shadows. Just as he decided to go over to her, Angie righted herself abruptly and started walking toward the parking garage, a key ring hanging limply from her fingers.
She shouldn't be driving,
Benny thought. Benny
started to walk after her, but then stopped. He barely knew Angie. It would be invasive, not to mention self-important, for him to sweep in like some pushy hero.

At that moment, apparently realizing that the center of their hurricane of sorrow had drifted away, a swarm of cheerleaders appeared at Angie's side. In the darkness they all looked dimly alike, as if they were a dozen twins trying to take the place of the one Angie had lost.

8:55 p.m.

“I KNOW IT WAS YOU!”

The scream—hysterical, anguished—jolted the soft hush of the vigil. Everyone looked around.

“Oh my God?”

“What the . . .”

“What's going on? Who is that?”

“I KNOW IT WAS YOU! I KNOW IT WAS YOU! I KNOW IT WAS YOU!” The scream repeated over and over.

Virginia spun around.
Where the hell is Benny?
she thought.
Is he hearing this?
She didn't know what to do. Her MO was just to follow Benny and do what he said. But she couldn't find him. It was hard to see anything in the crowd, because everyone was pushing and trying to find out what was going on.

Then she saw it. It was Gerard Cole, the water boy. He was screaming and pointing at someone in front of the fountain.
But then some freshmen moved in front of Virginia, and she couldn't see him anymore. She pushed a gap between them and shoved herself through.