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Oh yeah, thanks for that.
The gate is open. I start to talk. Lame as it is, I pretend the empty chair is Billy and I scream at the empty space where he’s supposed to be sitting for fifty-five minutes.
LXX
THE ACTUAL BILLY IS GONE.
Nobody sees him after morning break and by that night, his Facebook page is down and his email bounces. He doesn’t show at Fling, and Jack Griffith is drafted into being king at the last minute.
Attempts to contact Billy to find out when he’s pla
“How?” I say. “I thought he went dark.”
“He borrowed some other kid’s cell phone.”
Andie grabs Andy’s arm. “Why didn’t he use that other kid’s phone to call Gabby himself?”
This is not a rhetorical question.
You can tell that even though Andy knows the answer, he doesn’t have the heart to explain it to her. You can tell that the answer makes him sad and uncomfortable, but not sad and uncomfortable enough to hang up when Billy calls him on the other kid’s phone.
What was I supposed to say, that it was okay? It wasn’t.
That I forgave him? I didn’t.
That as good as I was at swearing at empty chairs, the thing I wanted most was to be able to go back to pretending that I was an adorable hot girl and he was my boyfriend who loved me, which made even my therapist look at me as if I were a hopeless case? It wasn’t my drinking problem or my closed head injury problem that was interesting to her all of a sudden—it was my Total Evasion of the Truth Problem. How much I wanted things to go back to the way they were even though I knew, I completely knew, that things were never really ever like that.
Andie says, “Well, he should have called Gabby. I’m sorry,” she says, looking over at Andy. “I know he was your best friend, but he isn’t very nice.”
And I think, How is it that Andrea Be
LXXI
“IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED?” MR. PIERSOL ASKS, thumping on the Wildcat. “Or is this one of those photoshopped dealies that’s someone’s idea of a joke?”
Everyone in the picture is there with a full complement of parents, except for, obviously, Billy.
Agnes is there, glaring at everyone, white despite excellent makeup.
“Jim,” she says to Mr. Piersol. “I don’t see how we can determine what happened, until we have forensic experts. Which I would be happy to provide. Why don’t we just collect these Wildcats here and now and hold them in a safe place until we can do that?” You can tell she isn’t going to be happy until she has all the Wildcats in a shed with some lighter fluid and a match.
Huey says, “It isn’t photoshopped.”
“Who authorized you to take that picture?” Agnes snaps. “Did a faculty member sign off on this? Did you get a release?”
Mr. Piersol more or less cringes. “Well, Gabby,” he says, “we seem to have been operating here on some unfounded assumptions. And we know about assumptions—”
“I really can’t remember,” I say very quickly in what turns out to be a very effective attempt to preempt an onslaught of Piersol clichés.
“You can stop saying that now,” Vivian sighs. “The cat is out of the bag.”
There it is. My own mother still doesn’t believe me.
“Well,” Mrs. Hewlett says, looking up from the orphan quadruped stowed in her bag. “I have a question, which is, how long have you had this picture, Hewbo?”
Huey looks completely miserable. “When the time stamp says. That’s when I took it.”
“You’re telling me you’ve had this picture since April and you didn’t think to bring it to us or the police because . . .”
At the sound of the word “police” Agnes starts hyperventilating and Mr. Piersol’s body seems to gain uncharacteristic muscle tone. This is when Mr. Piersol suspends everybody in the room. He looks very proud of himself.
You can tell that Huey is having to sit on his hands to restrain himself from taking a picture.
Huey’s mom, who has abandoned all pretense of paying attention, now has a mole sitting in her lap unraveling her loosely knit angora sweater with its tiny paws.
“I just don’t get it,” John says, not even slurred, from the back of the room. “If Gabby wasn’t suspended when we thought she was driving the car, why is she suspended now that you know it was her boyfriend who was driving?”
Mr. Piersol looks perplexed, possibly because he’s never heard a complete, unslurred sentence from my dad before, and possibly because the sentence—the sentence with my dad defending me—makes so much sense.
“What I don’t understand, Hewbo,” Madeleine Hewlett says, “is how you could have let your friend take the blame when you knew she didn’t do it.”
At which point Huey and everybody else in the room who is under eighteen recites in unison, “I thought she knew.”
I am already on my way out of the room when Mrs. Hewlett says, “I still don’t understand. Why on Earth would you think that?”
LXXII
I RUN INTO THE TEACHERS’ HANDICAP BATHROOM near the college counselor’s office, the only place at Winston School where you can lock the door and actually be alone. I turn on the water and the fan and then I wait to start crying, but I don’t. Weeks of crying like a total slob, and now there’s nothing left.
I stare at myself in the teachers’ handicap bathroom mirror, and I look so strange and so not like myself in all that opaque makeup. Clearly, it’s time for something new, but the thing is, I have no idea what new thing that will be.
I put my hands under the cold water and I splash it on my face, not really thinking about it, and the makeup starts to dissolve in sticky clumps. I start to wipe it off, a little at a time, until there are patches of naked skin, mostly beige, some not, some still turning the colors skin turns after it gets pummeled by an imploding car, air bags, and a eucalyptus tree. I look like myself, only slightly bruised. Which is to say: I look like myself.
Someone is banging on the door and I think that unless it’s a desperate handicapped person (which, if Winston had one, I would know about it) then it’s an extremely rude person who should go away, which I semi-nicely tell them to do.
“But it’s Lisa!” she shouts over the fan and the ru
“Go away!”
“Let me in!” If she doesn’t stop, she is going to attract attention and pretty soon there will be a platoon of helpful teachers helping her break down the door, which I crack open, and she squeezes in and turns the lock.
“What happened?” she says. “I was looking for you and I saw you ru
“Well, I might be suspended. Or not. Everybody might be suspended. Or not. They were still duking it out when I left.”
“Does that hurt?”
“Yeah. Only when you touch it.”
“How did I not know this was going on under your makeup?” she says.
I say, “I don’t know,” but I kind of do. Then we just stare at me in the mirror some more.
“I was just thinking, Billy did this to me. He got drunk and he stuck me in the car and he didn’t put a seat belt on me and he drove me into a tree. I just wanted to look at it. I never think about that part of it but here I am, and I’m such a pathetic loser, I hate him but I still somewhat want him.”