Exposure (8 page)

“Hey Craig, looks like your third wheel made it back alive,” said Brett Sanders, nodding in my direction as he took a swig from his beer can.

Craig glanced at me vacantly, then returned his gaze to the fire, which lit his face a shade of deep red.

Back up on the banks of the ravine, I saw the glare of five more flashlights heading toward us, looking almost like distant medieval torches weaving in and out among the birches. They'd all be back in from the game of tag, soon. Only it didn't seem much like childish fun and games anymore.

THE SCREECH OF THE INTERCOM cut through homeroom like a scythe, but the voice that coughed and cleared its throat anxiously wasn't that of our perky senior class secretary with her usual Monday morning announcements. Instead it was a beleaguered Mr. Kirkpatrick, who had the unenviable task of explaining that one of East Anchorage High's most popular and well-loved students would never again cross its threshold.

“It is with great sadness that I confirm the reports many of you have been hearing,” our guidance counselor announced, his voice husky with emotion. “Your fellow student Duncan Shaw died in a tragic accident over the weekend.” He added that there would be grief counselors on campus throughout the week, and, instead of the usual Friday afternoon pep rally, a memorial service would be held in the gym.

“My door is always open….” he said, trailing off and leaving a stunned silence in his wake. For several moments no one said a word, then the quiet was broken as students leaned in toward each other, speaking in hushed tones. I looked down at my desk in a daze and was aware of nothing else for the next half-hour. I didn't even remember hearing the bell or shuffling through the halls to first period, though I must have done it.

Mr. Kirkpatrick hadn't provided us with any of the gory details about Duncan's death, but the cloud of rumors swirling around school did the job for him … and then some. In Anchorage, news of this sort traveled with a speed that belied the city's growing population. It was a given that by dusk on Sunday half the students knew — or thought they knew — what had happened. So far this morning, I'd heard speculation that he'd committed suicide, his body found a few hundred yards from the hunting shack hanging from a low tree limb with his own belt as a noose. I'd also heard that when he was discovered on Saturday afternoon, his face was barely discernible, having been gnawed off by some sort of wild animal. Some people were convinced he'd passed out and choked to death on his own vomit. Others swore he'd fallen down a ditch, broken his leg, and froze to death.

All weekend long I'd been trying to will myself to imagine that Duncan's disappearance on Friday night could be explained away. But the conversation I'd overheard between Craig and Beth that night continued to haunt me. I tried to recall, word for word, what they had said to one another, but the fuzzy memories flitted around my brain like drunken butterflies, just out of my grasp. At the time, I had so instantly jumped to the conclusion that Beth was pregnant that I didn't even consider that there might be another, more sinister interpretation. Now, everything I thought I'd heard while huddled in Craig's car made me fear the worst. When Duncan hadn't shown up at the bonfire after the raucous game of flashlight tag, the only one who'd shown any visible concern was his girlfriend, Tiffany. As the party began to break up, she queried one person after another and was met with shrugs and dismissive laughter until finally, hiccuping nervously, she approached Beth and Craig just as the three of us were climbing into his Jeep.

“Have you seen Duncan?”

“Shaw?” Beth said, shaking her head. “The last time I saw lover boy was
hours
ago. He was in the corner making out with some freshman. Don't know her name.” This was generally in keeping with what I knew of Duncan's schizophrenic love life, so I thought nothing of it. Tiffany was still protesting when Beth slid, snakelike, into the passenger seat of the Jeep and slammed the door, forcing me to walk around to the other side of the car, where Craig leaned his seat forward to let me in.

The trip home was as silent and unsociable as the first leg of the journey had been. The only difference was that Beth's left hand stayed gripped on Craig's thigh throughout the drive and she ignored me completely until she got out to release me from the backseat. I couldn't help but think about the baby I imagined was growing inside her. Having a child at the age of eighteen would change her life forever, not to mention throw a giant wrench into her grand plans to be Prom Queen. Beth was manipulative as hell, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't have gotten pregnant on purpose if it meant forfeiting the crown. A weary sensation of relief washed over me when Craig finally pulled up to my house. Beth opened her door, and as I squeezed past her, she grabbed hold of my elbow, forcefully, and asked, “Hey, who tagged you?”

“What?” I asked. In the moonlight, her pristine white cheerleading jacket glowed ghost-like. Not wanting to lock eyes with hers, mine landed instead on a spot on her shoulder. A tiny red dot, a mere pinprick-sized blemish was visible on the white leather. Could it have been blood?

“Who. Tagged. You.” Beth said, enunciating slowly. Why had she been so insistent?

“Um, some freshman.” I wriggled free of her grasp. “They all look alike, don't they?” Flashing a nervous smile, I waved in the direction of the Jeep and headed for my front door, practically at a run.

Mrs. Kimball's tremulous voice finally broke my reverie.

“Class, please pass your quizzes to the front of the room.”

I'd been too immersed in my own thoughts to realize that, possibly trying to keep some semblance of normalcy in the classroom, our physics teacher had passed out her usual Monday morning pop quiz. Lost in thought, I had missed the whole thing. That was when Leonard, who sat to my right, reached over and placed on my desk a sheet of paper with the answers circled in pencil and my name printed in block letters at the top. He'd obviously taken the quiz for me. I turned to thank him, but he looked the other way as if in embarrassment — for once not using the opportunity to assail me with his badly formulated compliments. I was grateful.

The rest of the day was obviously shot to hell as students gathered in little clusters, comforting each other in shock and disbelief. Others walked zombie-like from class to class with a perpetually pallid look on their faces. A collection of bouquets and stuffed animals was starting to amass outside the hockey rink, and Duncan's locker was plastered with taped-up notes of condolence. On some level, everyone seemed affected by what had happened, from the thespians to the stoners. And although a few people were milking the drama — sporting black armbands made of construction paper seemed a bit gratuitous, after all — the general outpouring of emotion was a testament to Duncan's equal-opportunity friendliness. In truth, he'd been the only one of Craig's friends who didn't make me feel like a complete waste of space when I was in his company.

Grief counselors bogarted several of the classrooms on the first floor, arranging the desks in circles, presumably for group therapy sessions. Must be a depressing job, I mused. What somber scenarios did they encounter during the other 364 days a year? A local news network anchor and her camerawoman sat whispering to one another in two of the plastic chairs lined up outside the principal's office.

The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my feelings, so after bailing on fourth period I headed for the darkroom where I knew I could be alone. No teachers would be worried about truants today. I walked the hallway toward the art annex and when I was about to round the corner of a bank of lockers, two voices — ones I had recently become all too familiar with — stopped me in my tracks.

“I just can't deal with the … the
circus
right now.” Craig must have been standing just around the corner. His voice was low, a loud whisper. “Half of them didn't even know him. Not really.”

“Damn it, Craig, we've got bigger issues right now.” Beth's response was shockingly abrupt. “They're going to be questioning everybody who was at the party.”

“I still can't believe he fell! I mean, the look on his face…. It still feels like some bad dream I'm going to wake up from. We should just tell the truth. I mean, I wanted to call the cops that night!”

“No one could have known the ice was that thin! It wasn't our fault.”

“I punched him!”

“You were provoked, damn it!”

“Those things he said about you. What he did to you. I just couldn't stand there and let the guy get away with it.”

“Forget all that — ”

“How can I, Beth? I'm going to
jail
for this!”

“But you were only protecting me, Craig — ”

“When he grabbed for you … I almost thought he was going to pull you in with him. I … dammit, I actually thought for a second you'd be able to pull him out,” he said, punctuating his words with a groan.

“Of course I tried, but he caught me off balance,” she said. “There was
nothing
I could do — nothing either of us could do. But the only thing that's important now is that we get our stories straight. If anyone asks, we'll say we headed upriver toward the turnpike. We weren't there.
Nobody
was there.”

“They say he was alive for hours out there, you know….”

“Craig, we both saw him go in the freezing water. He was probably dead in under a minute.”

“But Chief Towers said he died of exposure. His body was found on
land
,” he said angrily. “What if he
wasn't
dead? What if we could have done something to save him?” There was a pause before Beth finally responded.

“But you can't save Duncan now. You can only hurt yourself.”

As I listened with my eyes as wide as saucers I was practically in a state of shock. So it was true. Beth wasn't pregnant. They'd been freaking out that night because they both had something to do with Duncan's death! Instinct told me to turn on my heels and get out of there as fast as possible. My Converse All-Stars barely made a sound as I started to back away, but just then, Craig rounded the corner. Our eyes locked, and I'm quite certain he could detect the look of sheer horror on my face.

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” He glared at me.

“Craig, I'm sorry about Duncan. If you need someone to talk to….” It was the only thing I could think to say without betraying everything I'd just overheard. I was standing far enough down the hall at this point that I hoped he didn't suspect I'd been eavesdropping. Craig paused and gazed at me intently.

“You should stay away from me, Skye,” he said, before continuing down the hall. My knees felt shaky and I dropped my messenger bag to the floor, letting my shoulders and head sink along with it.

BY WEDNESDAY NIGHT all of the local media outlets were reporting ad nauseum the “official” details of Duncan's death. It was even briefly mentioned on CNN during a special report on the rise of alcohol consumption among teens. Apparently, although it hadn't been cited by the police, the prevailing wisdom was that Duncan must have downed one too many before stumbling out into the woods to his death.

Although I carefully avoided watching television or reading the paper during that time, it was pretty pointless, because that's all anyone seemed inclined to talk about, including my parents. They wanted to know how much I had to drink that night, how many drinks I thought were “too many,” and all sorts of similarly embarrassing and frankly useless questions. I thought about telling them everything, but somehow the words just wouldn't come out. Besides, communication in my family wasn't a strong suit these days. In any case, it was obvious that my mom and dad sensed I was on edge. I couldn't blame them for speculating, but I wasn't about to give them the real reason for my anxiety: that I might very well be an accomplice to murder.