“That she had a best friend. He was sweet about it. He was so nice,” she said. None of that, however, mattered. As October rolled over into November, then December, Emily’s own world rocked with Belinda’s indecision. “When he would leave on Sunday night, then we’d be back together. Stefan would head out and I would move back in. She would make me leave in the middle of the night, but she didn’t make him leave. I knew they didn’t do, you know, everything, because she had this Christianity rule about being a virgin when she got married. But they did lots of things in bed. Almost everything, including things we did together. I would go nuts thinking of her with him, like that. I would rip her sheets off the bed. I would pray he would get in a car accident on the way back and die.”
Stefan’s eyes were terrible. I could only imagine the blistering effect of such intimate talk, from this girl’s mouth, in front of his mother—and how it must have brought back unbidden images of Belinda, fearsome in their sweetness.
Right before Christmas, Belinda told Emily that Stefan would soon move to Black Creek full-time. He was going to start school, with one class, then a full load in spring. Now Belinda would have to make that long-deferred choice. If Stefan thought he would win in the long game, Emily thought she would lose. How could she lose Belinda? Her lover-angel-best friend, Belinda’s cologne on her palms, Belinda’s strong athlete’s legs and hips, her voice singing off-key in the morning light as she boiled water for tea, how could she lose all this? She decided to wait. She decided to do something to stop him. She said, “He’s right. I did want to kill him, Thea.”
“And you mean, really kill him?”
“Not bomb his house or something. But he wasn’t an idiot. If he died, it would be his own fault. It would be because he was too big a dope fiend to turn anything down and take care of his own life.”
And that was when Emily said, she stepped over the wire. She began to make her plan.
How could I sit here with such a creature in my home? Yes, she was also a victim, if only of Jill’s consuming obsession; but this did nothing to stem my revulsion. I tried to remember what it was like to be eighteen years old and desperately in lust, truly believing that your sole umbilical cord to joy was attached to one person. I loved Jep but I had never felt like that about anyone—not until Stefan was born and my helpless love surrounded him like a nimbus.
“So then he was always at Belinda’s. We would do things together, all three of us. We would go out and dance. He was really a good dancer. I would bring over stuff for when we hung out. Usually Molly.”
I glanced at our dog. She recognized my confusion.
“Molly. The drug. Ecstasy. Stefan just took what I gave him. So that would be how I would stop him. That night, the townie girl who sold me the drugs said, you can’t mess around with this stuff. It kills people. I didn’t care.”
“You heard her now, Mom,” Stefan put in, his fist slamming into the paneling.
I jumped up. “Don’t make it sound like she forced you, Stefan. You made that call yourself.”
I pictured my son as he had been that first night in the hospital jail ward, turned away from me, the back of his head soaked in blood, then turned toward me, his eyes sunken in dark pits, his fingernails crusted, spittle and blood dried on his lips.
That night, she first gave him the Molly, and only pretended to take some herself. “Then I told him he had to use a different way to take the other stuff. We went to my room and I boiled some water in my teakettle. I had those vitamin C packs you use for your immunity, so that was good. I could mix that with the drugs and some bottled water, and I did. Then I heated up the mix a little so it dissolved, and I got out a syringe and showed him how to shoot up because he had never done it before and he was afraid. You have to be really careful.”
“I can’t hear this crap,” I said, leaning forward to grip my knees, trying to control the spurt of bile in my throat. By now, I would have thought I would have the emotional equivalent of alligator hide, but I could still be shocked by the grim details.
“You said you wanted to hear every single thing.”
I took a long breath. “Okay.”
She went on, “You have to make sure the bevel of the needle is facing the right way. You start with the veins closest to the wrist. But at the last minute, I said, Stefan, don’t. That stuff is too much for you. But he did it anyway. I saw his eyes roll up in his head. After, he wanted me to drive him to Belinda’s. I called Belinda and she picked up. I said, I need you. She said, I need you too, but don’t come, don’t let Stefan near the place, because her mom had just called and Belinda hung up on her and Jill was going savage.”
Jill had found Belinda’s small leather portfolio, in which she kept her special things, apparently kicked under the bed and left at home by mistake. When Jill picked it up, a single photo fell out in a thin delicate silver frame. It pictured Emily and Belinda under a waterfall. “We were kissing and our bodies were sort of covered by the waterfall. You couldn’t see my face, but you could see we didn’t have any clothes on. We took it by setting the timer on the camera one morning at Blueberry Park. There were letters too, bound with pink ribbon.”
Emily didn’t think that was really any mistake, for how could Belinda not have noticed that folder was missing for days? Belinda was crying, asking Emily, what should I do? What should I do? The time had come.
Emily hung up and turned to Stefan.
“I’m so sorry, Stefan, but she says it’s over,” she told him. “He said I was lying. I said I wasn’t lying. I was lying, but Belinda and I, we talked about running away, going to another school.” So, as if saying so would make it true, Emily told Stefan that she and Belinda were going to run away. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
His head was already swimming with the toxic drug cocktail, Stefan started to cry like a little kid. He said he thought he was dying. He kept passing out and waking up.
I asked, “What did you do? Were you frightened?”
“I just watched him,” Emily said. And shrugged. She knew he would insist on going. So let Belinda see what kind of feeb she was involved with.
I glanced over at Stefan. He was crying now, silently. It occurred to me that this might also be the first time that Stefan had heard a full account of the next fatal moments. While I wanted to get up and go to him, it seemed disloyal to treat him like a child now, in front of this girl.
“Then suddenly he grabbed his car keys and ran out of the apartment to the parking lot and I went after him. It was like, zero out. We were freezing because we didn’t have any coats. He promised he wouldn’t do anything crazy, but he had to see Belinda. He just wanted to talk quietly with Belinda. I tried to grab the keys and said he was too messed up to drive. He said he’d give me the keys but only if I’d drive him there. Otherwise he’d take me out of town on a lonely road and leave me there.”
So she did. When they got to Belinda’s building, he jumped out. But Emily couldn’t find a place to leave the car, even an illegal spot. It took her ten minutes and she was still half a block away. As she finally made it to the top of the stairs, she stopped across the hall from Belinda’s apartment door, out of breath and courage. She heard voices, but couldn’t make out the words. Finally, she pushed open the door. The room was dark and quiet. Esme fumbled for the hall light switch, and tripped over Belinda’s cell phone. From somewhere inside, she could hear Stefan moaning, almost growling.
“What came next?” I said.
With all my might, I did not want to know. “What did you do?”
Emily crept into the living room.
She leaned to one side to snap on the lamp she knew was there.
She said that Belinda and Stefan were lying on the floor, in front of the couch, their bodies half on top of each other, almost in an embrace. A golf club, thickly coated in blood, was propped like a sword against Stefan’s leg. He was stirring, his head thrashing a little, but Belinda... Belinda’s head was broken in the back like a pumpkin after Halloween.
“There was nothing I could do, Thea. I knew she was dead.”
Emily breathed in slowly, then out. She said she went into the bedroom then and found the little satin bag she and Belinda were using to save cash for their plan of running away together. They’d put together a few hundred dollars.
“Then I just ran, Thea, I just ran. I didn’t want to go to prison. Because now you get it, right? You see what I mean when I said I knew the truth. It was really all my fault.” She glanced up and reached for her backpack. “I have to go.”