“You’re telling me,” I pipe up, just to say something. “Once in the Berkshires, a reporter camped out next to us on the concert lawn at Tanglewood.”
“I’m talking about my award! This honor was planned last November, before the incident happened. It’s like the world is out to thwart me. You need to promise me that you will not speak to any reporters about this latest bit of ugliness, even if that Ryan Lombardi comes around again, flattering you, Olivia.” She drops the wine-soaked towels into the trash and turns to clear coffee mugs from the sink. “I’m sure your mother will say the same to you, Julia.”
“What happened in the woods is over,” I say, for Liv, even if I don’t believe it for a second, because it’s what Liv wants to hear, and she needs me on her side, having to deal every day with this big bag of crazy.
Liv smiles weakly. “Exactly.”
Deborah tears open a box with a flaxen-haired girl on the front and expertly combines the contents of the two plastic bottles. The ammonia smell is acrid and instantaneous, and it singes my nostrils. I hold my breath.
“So, I’ll see you at school tomorrow. Stay well, okay?” Liv says, then turns to Deborah. “Julia got sick in gym.”
Deborah raises an eyebrow as she peels thin clear gloves from a sheet of directions, the tearing sound a perfunctory note of dismissal.
“Right.” I glance back to say “You stay well, too,” but Deborah already has her hand on the back of Liv’s neck, drawing perfect rows of poison down her scalp.
*
I’ve been rinsing the salad greens for minutes before I notice they’re wilting. The oven timer is buzzing, which means the chicken is nice and crispy, but I ignore that, too. I was determined to have dinner ready by the time Mom changed out of her wet clothes, a little dig for being later than she said she’d be, on a rainy night when she should have known I wouldn’t want to be alone, because I despise rain nearly as much as trees, the cold, and sociopaths. But then I got to thinking about Liv’s perverse interest in Shane, and the body, and whether what happened in the woods is really over, and suddenly the mesclun was mush.
And the phone’s been flashing. Voice mail can wait, because surely it’s Ricker, the only person who calls the house phone, asking how does the news of a body in the woods make me feel, exactly? Also, what were my thoughts before collapsing in gym? I wrinkle my nose at the phone and reposition the remaining grocery bags, so Mom will see them when she hustles downstairs and act sheepish because her work is creeping right back in where it was before the woods, to that place that comes before me.
Blink after spastic blink. “Easy, Ricker,” I murmur, wiping my hands on my jeans. Raindrops thrum the skylight over my head. I glance up warily as I cross the room to the phone and press Play.
“This is Paula Papademetriou calling for Julia Spunk.” The voice is husky and confidential.
I run from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs and look up. A crack of light glows under Mom’s bedroom door.
“I’d like to talk with you about the recent developments in the Middlesex Fells Reservation,” she says, and then she leaves her personal cell phone number.
I tear back to the kitchen and scan the counter. The glazed clay fish I made in fifth grade to hold pencils contains only lead dust. Mom’s door squeaks open; her feet thump down the stairs, quick, like a child’s. I grab a box of aluminum foil off the counter, tear off a sheet, and lay it flat, using my fingernail to scrape digits into the silver as she enters the kitchen.
“Honey, the timer,” she says.
I hunch my shoulders, fold the foil into a triangle, and drop it into the fish’s mouth. “Give it five more minutes.”
“Is everything all right?” she asks me.
I catch her gazing into the sink at the colander of green mush. “The mesclun was dirty. Gritty dirty.” I rush to the stove and bang at the timer, avoiding her eyes. I’m acting crazy, speaking way too fast, but I can’t slow down. “Better safe than sorry. Did you know a woman found a black widow spider in a bunch of supermarket grapes?”
Mom unlatches her silver bead necklace and sets it on the granite counter with a pretty click. “Can’t say that I did.” She meets me at the stove and pushes my hair behind my ear, frowning. “How are you handling the awful news?”
“News?”
“About that poor girl.”
“Oh that. I don’t know. Aren’t I supposed to wait for Elaine Ricker to tell me how to handle it?”
“Chilly night.” She turns away and rubs opposite arms, heading for the sink. “We can talk about it later. If you want to. Or not.” She covers the lettuce with a paper towel and pats it carefully. “Who called?”
“Oh, the voice mail? That was a reporter.” I hold my breath.
“Leaving their personal number? Pushy.”