“Not exactly. I had a strategically timed guidance office appointment–cum–wellness checkin.”
Liv smiles. “I’m familiar. But you’re going to have to face lunch someday. Like, tomorrow.” She parts a pack of wispy, wan girls—friends of my next-door neighbor, Alice Mincus—and stakes out a corner. They change clothes and tie their sneakers fast. I try to decide if it’s Liv they’re intimidated by or my weird factor, but Liv seems not to notice either way. When the last few scatter, she circles the locker room, yanking back shower curtains and checking under stalls. I watch, mystified. Liv usually pooh-poohs my paranoia, but here she is, feeding it. It’s like a minivindication. Satisfied there are no spies, she turns to me.
“They found a dead girl in the woods,” she says.
“I know. My mother told me last night.” After Moleman did. But no sense mentioning that.
“You knew? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I figured your mom talked to you about it.” As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I realize how ridiculous that sounds. If Liv glosses over what happened, Deborah Lapin shellacs it. Being preyed upon by a man who played dress-up in the woods is not in line with the image she has cast for Liv. “I mean, I was trying to be better. More like you. Not get hung up on the past,” I add. That last line is a direct quote from one of our weekly e-mails while I was in the Berkshires, the ones that kept me sane and tethered to reality. While Patty Petty said let it all hang out, Liv gave me permission—really, more of a directive—to let it go.
Liv brushes her hair back roughly behind one ear. It’s Liv’s hair, cornsilk-fine and aggressively highlighted, that guys always notice first. That and her boobs, full-blown by sixth grade. “I think that’s great,” she says, her eyes skipping around the room. “Moving forward and all.”
“Right? Ricker wants me to do hypnosis. She says unlocking my repressed memories is the way to heal. But then she avoids answering questions that might actually help me heal. To me that’s a contradiction. It’s like she wants me on one path: hers.”
Liv slides her jaw from side to side.
“I’m pretty sure Ricker got a call about the body right in the middle of our session yesterday. She tried to pretend it was her daughter, but I knew something was up,” I say. “So do you think Donald Jessup killed that other girl?”
Liv’s face goes dark. After the woods, my mother spun into action, jetting me out of town and hooking me up with Patty Petty, then Ricker. Deborah’s sole effort at supporting Liv was dragging her to speak with a local priest exactly once before signing herself into Valium rehab. I can be bitter about my forced removal, but at least what my mother did was in the realm of appropriate reactions for a mother.
Of course Deborah isn’t a mother, but a hedgewitch.
“How are things with your mo—”
“Eighteen is hardly a girl,” Liv says suddenly. “She was old enough to vote.”
“Everyone out!” Ms. Dean booms as she rounds the corner, sporting an unfortunate choppy new haircut. She stops short and knits her brows, making a lumbering mental calculation. I imagine she’s recalling what she learned during meetings of the school’s Incident Management Team.
“Are you ladies okay? Do you need, um, support?” she says.
“We are so okay!” Liv says, already out the door when Ms. Dean plants her ham-hand on my shoulder.