“Oh, Lord Almighty, his musical,” drawled Kipling, grimacing. “It was eatin’ him alive.”
“He was stressed about his musical, definitely,” I said. “But there was something else going on too. Something I found out about.”
They were watching me, rapt, waiting for me to go on.
“I’m pretty sure he was hooking up with Vida Joshua.”
No one said a word. They just stared at me in shock.
“The day before he disappeared was the first night of Spring Vespers, remember?”
They nodded.
Spring Vespers—it was a two-night performance of skits, speeches, and original songs commemorating the end of the year and preceding finals week.
Around five, Jim texted me. He said he had a fever and chills, and was heading to the infirmary. I was shocked. After all, a medley of original songs from Nowhere Man was being performed that night. It was the cornerstone of Spring Vespers, the first time anyone had heard it, so for Jim to abandon his own production on the eve of its debut was very strange. Even if he was nervous about it, he’d never quit. Later that night, after eight, I was running late for Vespers, having stayed longer than I realized in the library. I veered behind the cafeteria on my way to the auditorium. It was the shortcut Jim and I sometimes took. That was when I saw him. Sitting by the loading dock. Not sick. At all. He was fine. Just sitting there in a black T-shirt and jeans, as if waiting for someone. Alone. I stood behind a tree and texted him.
How’s the infirmary?
One hundred and two fever, he wrote back, plus a sick emoji. I watched him write this, completely nonchalant.
I’ll come visit you, I wrote.
No. No. Don’t. I’m going to sleep.
I couldn’t believe it. I was about to confront him right then and there. Only that was when a car slinked up. Slow. No headlights. Taking care not to be noticed. Jim hopped off the ledge and climbed right in. Vida Joshua was driving.
“You saw her?” asked Cannon.
I nodded. “It was Mr. Joshua’s beat-up red Nissan. The one he kept behind the music school with the keys in the ignition and the For Sale sign in the back window. The one the administration was always asking him to get towed.”
“Poor Mr. Joshua,” said Whitley. “If his head wasn’t attached, he’d lose it.”
“Did you ever confront Jim, child?” Kipling asked.
I nodded. “The next day. He didn’t admit anything. But he was furious.”
“Furious at you?” asked Martha, squinting skeptically.
I nodded.
Leave me alone, Beatrice. Stop spying on me. What are you, my father?
Jim’s reaction had scared me. I’d never seen him like that before: trembling hands, tears in his eyes, anger like a sudden venom in his veins, making him scowl and spit and contort his face so he was unrecognizable. He’d been on edge for weeks, a mood I’d attributed to the pressure of getting his musical ready for Spring Vespers and recording the producer’s demo Mr. Joshua had set up. I want it to be glorious, Bee. I’m going for glory. He had turned inside out with anxiety, self-doubt, despair. The notes have lost their velvet, he whined. What had once sounded like a haunting theme song had suddenly become shrill to him. His lyrics were clichéd. No amount of insistence on my part that they were good could convince him otherwise. Our relationship had become brittle, a series of botched conversations about stanzas and syncopated rhythms, finding a better rhyme for dissipate.
Figure eight? Exonerate? I’d try.
Just forget it, Jim would snap.
That afternoon, I’d given Jim every chance to explain what I’d seen, tell me the innocent reason he’d climbed into Very Flexible Vida’s Nissan that night and lied to me about it.
But he didn’t.
You want to break up with me over this? he screamed. Good. I’ve had enough of your insecurities and childishness and your totally annoying inability to see the bad in people. Sometimes there’s evil in the world, okay? Sometimes the sickness is right in front of you.
His words had made me turn and sprint down the hill, hot tears blinding me. When I stopped and looked back, I saw in surprise that Jim wasn’t following me as I’d expected. Instead, he was striding across the hill, a dark and consumed expression on his face, out of sight.
Like he was over me. Like we really were done.
That was the last time I ever spoke to Jim.
Two days later he was dead.
“The day after Rector Trask announced that Jim had been found dead,” I went on, “it was all over the newspapers. That same day, Vida disappeared.”
“What do you mean?” asked Cannon.
“She immediately left town, remember? They made the announcement.”
“That’s right,” said Whitley slowly, wrinkling her nose. “At Final Assembly. ‘And in further news, Miss Joshua is taking a job in stem cell research at the University of Chicago.’?”
Kipling nodded, dubious. “It was like hearin’ a chimpanzee got employed at the State Department.”
“You thought she was fleeing the scene of the crime?” Martha asked me.
“The timing was strange,” I said with a nod. “Like she was afraid of something. Anyway, I checked Facebook, and she’s working as an assistant chef at Angelo’s Italian Palace, living at home again. I always wished I’d had the guts to confront her. Now I do.”
I took a deep breath and stood up.
“Who’s coming with me?”
One by one, with uneasy expressions, they raised their hands.
Vida Loretta Joshua was seven years older than all of us.
She was Mr. Joshua’s only child. She’d graduated from Darrow and gone off to college in North Carolina, only she’d had some kind of mental breakdown—the exact nature of which remained vague—dropped out, and moved home.
When you visited the Joshuas’ modest Tudor cottage on Darrow’s campus, it was like visiting two ordinary people housing a pet leopard. This was because: (1) Vida Joshua was stunningly beautiful, with black hair, far-apart blue eyes, alien cheekbones, a face so symmetrical and arresting when she finally looked at you (which she only did after a prolonged delay) that it was like finding a wildcat lazily regarding you from a mountaintop as you squinted through binoculars; and (2) Mr. and Mrs. Joshua seemed to be afraid of their daughter. They addressed her in soft tones. They tiptoed around (with no sudden movements) the spot where she could be found sunning herself on the living room couch with unwashed hair and baggy sweats, eating a bag of kale chips, watching Real Housewives of Atlanta. They seemed too scared to arrange her reentry to the wild (college) or get her into a rehabilitation sanctuary (therapy). So they just left her alone, bored and depressed, or whatever Vida was.
No one was really sure.
Sophomore year, Mr. Joshua twisted someone’s arm to get her a job at Darrow. Vida started appearing in admissions, yawning as she shuffled unconvincingly between the copy machine and a computer; later she turned up in the Spanish department; then as assistant coach for JV field hockey, though when that didn’t work out (apparently few were comfortable working alongside a big cat), they stuck her in the remote outpost of the art gallery. Most of the time she left the front desk unattended, and could be found outside in the back by the dumpsters, chatting with a random student, always a boy. Rumors swirled that her nickname at Darrow had been Very Flexible Vida, that she’d had sex with the entire wrestling team, that she’d fallen in love with a professor in college and stalked his wife, which had resulted in a restraining order that led to Vida’s mysterious breakdown.