The sound Jordan’s head makes, bouncing off the speckled floor, is like a watermelon being dropped. Red droplets scatter and the sound changes a little, goes squishier, and Ella notices these small details only because she is sitting at the next table over, frozen in place. Some people are recording the whole thing on their phones, but she is doing the same thing she does at home when Dad winds his arm around Mom’s neck, just watching, numb, still and silent, in horror.
Mr. Brannen and Ms. Baez show up and pry Thomas off Jordan, who isn’t moving. Thomas doesn’t attack them, though—he keeps lunging away to get at Jordan, his small white hands curled into bloodied claws. Mr. Brannen carries him out of the room like an angry cat, the boy twisting and thrashing in the big man’s grasp. Ms. Baez falls to her knees with a heavy thump, gently tapping on Jordan’s cheeks and lifting his head to inspect the bloody spot on the ground as Shelby Miller loudly explains that you’re not supposed to move a hurt person’s neck. Soon the teachers arrive and herd everyone back to class with their half-eaten lunches to watch nature documentaries as they mechanically chew at their desks.
Thomas and Jordan don’t come back to class. Jordan’s friend Stevie tells everyone that he’s in the hospital in a coma. The evening news talks about it without naming names, and Mom asks Ella a bunch of questions that she obviously doesn’t know the answers to about The Boys in Her Class and bullying and drugs and the school’s discipline issues.
The weirdest thing, though, is that Ella was right there, sitting with Hayden and Tyler and Olivia and Sophie, and she saw the whole thing herself. Before it happened, the boys weren’t talking or even paying attention to each other. Jordan wasn’t bullying Thomas, didn’t steal his lunch or threaten him or laugh at him or even look at him. He was talking to Stevie and eating a sandwich, just being normal. They were all just being normal. And for all that Jordan is a total jerk, she’s never actually seen him go after Thomas; it’s like they never even acknowledged each other’s existence before that moment. Thomas was reading a book and eating a bag of crackers. He didn’t say anything. Nothing was said to him. He just dropped his crackers, stood up, turned, and attacked.
The whole thing makes no sense.
The scariest part, to Ella, was the look in Thomas’s eyes.
It was like…no one was there at all.
6.
When David finds the letter from the bank, he reacts with an unusual and overly bright calm that Chelsea finds utterly terrifying.
“Everything is okay,” he says, crumpling up the paper and throwing it in the garbage. “It’s just a mistake. I might need to move some cash around, but this isn’t our main account. I’ll handle it.” And then he pulls a few crisp hundreds out of his money clip to tide her over and tells her not to spend it on “stupid shit.”
Like she would dare.
And that’s that.
Supposedly.
No matter what David said, she can’t quite shake her disquiet, like the rug could be pulled out from under her at any moment. Banks don’t just make errors like that these days, and Chelsea knows, because that’s David’s industry, and she’s had to hear about it for years. The memory of David wadding up the letter and tossing it is stuck on replay in her mind, sharp as a pebble in her shoe.
That Friday night, David sends Chelsea off to the spa for a Botox party with Brian’s wife, Marissa. He doesn’t ask her, just tells her where to be and when and promises not to give the girls too much sugar. Now she’s reclining in a heated chair, bare feet bubbling away in hot water tinted an impossible blue. The doctor is injecting poison into her face, tiny pinpricks that would hurt more if they hadn’t cheerfully supplied her with a Percocet and a flute of champagne first, which sounds both dangerous and illegal, but to be honest she’s grateful for the relief.
Marissa is in the next chair, babbling to her friend Abby about eyelash extensions. Chelsea hates almost everything about this moment and can’t believe how excited everyone else is. Six women in heated massage chairs, lined up to solve their problems with a needle. They take turns holding the mirror, turning this way and that, promising one another they look ten years younger even though the doctor clearly said it will take seven days to achieve the full effect and they’re all a little pink and lumpy.
“Lot of worry lines here,” he says, poking the wrinkles on her forehead that David hates so much. “You’ll definitely want to be back in a few months. And if they persist, there are other things we can try. Fillers.” He’s in his twenties and looks like a cleft-chinned movie star, and Marissa’s chest follows him around the room like she’s a satellite dish tuning in to a prime channel. Chelsea is all too aware that to a plastic surgeon, she’s just a thing that needs fixing, a car that needs some body work, a big pile of flaws clutching her husband’s hundred-dollar bills. “That should do it,” the doctor finally says, stepping back and holding the needle aloft. “Beautiful.”
“Oh my God,” Marissa croons, leaning in. “Dr. G, you’re a genius. Chel, you look amazing.”
The doctor grins his thanks and turns to the next chair, murmuring the same combination of compliments before pointing out every delicious flaw on a perfectly normal face. Marissa hands her a mirror, and Chelsea reaches up to touch her forehead. She looks like she’s been stung by bees—and has bad allergies. Her face is numb, but she doesn’t know if that’s the injections or the drugs or this afternoon’s crying jag. There’s apparently no recovery time, no relief of hiding in bed for a day or a week as things heal—she’ll just look stupid for a while. At least it’s finally done, one more thing her husband has steered her toward, pushing her inexorably into something she swore she’d never do.
The other night—it was worse than usual. She went all the way unconscious, and when she woke up the next morning, her throat hurt. She made David’s favorite dinner that evening, shrimp scampi, and when he led her into the bedroom, she did whatever he wanted, let him shove her to her knees and direct her head with a fist in her hair. She wanted to please him and disappear at the same time, and for a few days, it worked. But then she left a few dishes in the sink, and she didn’t buy enough of his favorite beer, and Brooklyn talked back, and he loomed in the corner of the counter as she cleared the table, glaring at her as he lazily tipped back bottle after bottle, and when he sent her out with Marissa to get fixed, she just hoped it would satisfy him more than her mouth could.
When she left this morning, after making sandwiches for his lunch, he smiled at her and told her she was a good wife, and that compliment bloomed like a star in her chest, and she hates that he can do that to her, make her roll belly-up like a kicked dog when she can still feel the bruises his knuckles made in her scalp.