We Know It Was You Read online

  “Mom, I’m fine. I’m at the Boarders with Virginia. . . . Yes, her.”

  Virginia flinched at the way he said “her.” Clearly Mrs. Flax wasn’t her biggest fan.

  “I don’t know, maybe eleven thirty? We have . . . homework. Mom, stop; we’re just friends.”

  Virginia slammed the refrigerator door shut.

  “Mom, please? I’ll unload the dishwasher. I’ll take Grandma to synagogue. . . . Okay. Love you too. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut. “Sorry about that. My mom’s picking me up at eleven thirty. Is that enough time?”

  Virginia checked the computer, glad for an excuse not to look at Benny. Her cheeks felt hot, and she knew she was probably blushing. It wasn’t a sweet or coquettish look on her; it made her look angry. “I don’t know,” she said. “Depends on how much footage there is on the camera.”

  There was a small echo to her voice. All the rooms in the Boarders echoed, because they were always empty. The Boarders was a neglected old building at the edge of campus where the resident students lived. Winship Academy used to be a boarding school back in the sixties and seventies. But the residence program was being gradually phased out, and now there were only about two dozen boarders in the entire school. Every year the trustees threatened to cut the program entirely. It created a weird distance between the regular students and the boarders, like it wasn’t worth getting too attached to them, because at any moment they could disappear.

  Benny wasn’t sure exactly what Virginia’s deal was. He knew she usually went to Florida during school holidays, but he never got the feeling that she was actually from Florida, only that Florida was where she went. Maybe her family had a beach house or something. He’d never asked. It seemed rude to pry into the boarders’ home situations. There was probably something dysfunctional about them, or else why would they be here?

  He and Virginia sat side by side on a pair of wheeled desk chairs, waiting for the common room’s ancient computer to buzz to life.

  There was a soft, low whistle above their heads. They both looked up.

  “That’s it,” Virginia said, pointing to the ceiling. “Do you hear it?”

  There was a ghost living in the attic—at least that’s what all the boarders thought. Virginia had been trying to get Benny to investigate it for weeks, but he was always reluctant. Investigating a ghost was way too much like a Scooby-Doo! episode, and he didn’t want to encourage any more comparisons. And anyway there was no ghost, just scuttling squirrels and the whistle of wind and the magnolia tree casting twisted shadows. And the boarders below padding around like ghosts themselves, probably wishing there were a ghost so that they could have some company.

  “Hm,” Benny grunted, uninterested.

  Virginia connected the camera to the computer and stared at the little icon that indicated the video was loading. She gave Benny a quick glance. He looked so dorky and serious in his voluminous turtleneck, but actually he was kind of a rebel. Back in the woods, he’d just grabbed the camera and breezed past the throng of police officers who had descended upon the scene. She’d seen enough SVU to know that this was tampering with evidence, but Benny didn’t seem to care. She knew he didn’t like the police—something to do with his childhood dog? She didn’t know the whole story. Old Virginia could have wheedled it out of him in no time, but new Virginia wasn’t obsessed with people’s weird dog traumas.

  “It has a bar code,” Benny said, pointing to the bottom of the camera. “I think it’s from the library.”

  Virginia opened a viewer on the computer and pressed play. A bright, white-and-gray room filled the screen. At the edge of the frame they could make out the brown fur of Brittany’s mascot costume beside the camera.

  “It’s the locker room,” Virginia said, surprised. She’d expected the footage to begin at the bridge.

  There was giggling, and a pair of white-and-blue pom-poms sailed across the screen. Then a girl appeared in a pink bra and shorts with the word PRINCESS across the butt. The camera angle raised slowly, surreptitiously, showing her face. Blond hair, radiant skin, faintly flushing cheeks. It was Angie Montague.

  “Brittany, get off your ass,” Angie was saying, swiping her pom-poms toward the camera. Another cheerleader bounced into the frame for a second, carrying a pink Gatorade. She was completely naked.

  “Oh my God,” Benny said, quickly covering his eyes. “They don’t know there’s a camera.”

  Virginia stared at the screen. “Omigod. Corny Davenport’s boobs are gigantic. She must wear like ten bras to keep those puppies down.” It was the exact kind of tidbit that would have exploded in the old days on Winship Confidential.

  “What else is happening?” Benny asked, still covering his eyes.

  “Um . . .” Virginia squinted at the screen. “They’re just, you know, bouncing around. They’re changing into their uniforms.”

  “Are they still naked?”

  “Yep.”

  Benny could hear giggling and locker doors opening and slamming. He knew he should open his eyes. He didn’t want Virginia to think he was a pervert, but he couldn’t trust her not to miss something important.

  About a dozen cheerleaders were bouncing into and out of the frame in various stages of undress. The lens slowly zoomed in and out, showcasing whichever girl happened to be the most naked. One girl had a large powder puff of glitter and began patting it up and down the long, smooth limbs of the other girls, until their skin shimmered and clouds of glitter formed in the air around their bodies. The dingy locker room was suddenly transformed into an ethereal place where the beauty of the girls was so magical it caused the atmosphere to literally sparkle.

  Benny realized his mouth was hanging open slightly. He snapped it shut. It felt very wrong to be watching incredibly beautiful naked girls when someone was dead and he was supposed to be figuring out why. He wished he didn’t have to watch this in front of Virginia. It was so awkward he felt almost ill.

  “Is Brittany obsessed with boobs or something?” Virginia said loudly. “Why would she need to record them? She can see them in the locker room every day.”

  “Maybe the tape was for someone else,” Benny answered, not looking at her. “The football players. Or some voyeur website.”

  “Putting her own cheerleading squad on the Internet?” Virginia said. “That’s pretty messed up.”

  Benny shrugged. People were pretty messed up; it didn’t surprise him.

  “Here we go,” Virginia announced. The video moved jerkily out of the locker room and onto the brightly lit football field. An enormous shout rose up from the bleachers as cheerleaders skipped past the camera, waving their pom-poms and doing cartwheels. Occasionally the image was blocked out by the large furry arm of Brittany’s mascot costume.

  “I wonder if the camera was sewn into the costume,” Virginia said. “She may not have known it was there.”

  “No, she knew,” Benny said. “She’s using the zoom button. She’s getting specific shots. It’s probably why she got a real camera instead of just using her phone.”

  For a long time the camera was very still, pointing inertly at the football field. In the background, the pep band played an abysmal rendition of “We Will Rock You.” The two teams scuttled back and forth, first in one direction, then in the opposite direction. Was there a stupider game than football?

  “Look at that dope Gerard,” Virginia said. “Could he be any more obvious? He’s been gaping at Angie the entire game.”

  The timer blared from the speakers. The camera moved as the cheerleaders started getting into formation for the halftime show.

  “Okay, watch carefully,” Benny said. “Watch for anything strange.”

  But it was hard to see anything at all. The camera was jerking around, almost spinning. “Brittany, get it together!” one of the girls was shouting. “Brittany. Brittany!”

  Then the camera lurched forward. Brittany was running from the field.

  “And she’s off,” Virginia said. The blackness of t
he forest bounced wildly in the frame as Brittany careened toward it. For a while there was just darkness and the sound of the mascot costume swishing as she ran. Then the camera was on the ground, and it was still.

  “She dropped it,” Benny said.

  “On purpose?” Virginia asked.

  Benny didn’t answer; he didn’t know. The camera was pointing toward the bridge, which appeared brightly illuminated by the moon. The whole scene had seemed much darker in real life.

  “It’s a wide exposure,” Virginia said, answering his thoughts. “That’s why it looks so much brighter. But it also distorts the image quality. See how grainy it is?”

  Benny nodded. Seconds passed as the video played footage of the empty bridge.

  “I bet this is all a dumb prank,” Virginia said. “Watch, I bet we’ll see Brittany sneaking out of the costume and then tossing it over the rail. ‘Mascot Commits Suicide.’ It’s kind of funny.”

  “Not really,” Benny said, still staring at the screen.

  “Well, yeah, obviously not. But it’s the sort of thing those dumb football guys would think is funny.”

  “Shhh, listen,” Benny said. In the background they could hear a faint melody: We’re following the leeeeeeader. “It’s about to happen.”

  Sure enough, a great lumbering lion came crashing out of the woods. Benny shivered. An hour ago he’d watched a girl jump off this one-hundred-foot bridge, and now he was about to watch it again. The spookiest part was how disconnected he felt from it, from the gravity and finality of death. It was like Brittany wasn’t a real person; she was just a question: Why?

  “Look, that’s you,” Virginia said, pointing to a figure at the edge of the screen.

  Benny squinted at it. “That’s not me.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not where I was standing. I wasn’t that close to the bridge.”

  “Well maybe it’s me. . . . No, I wasn’t standing there either. Um, who is that?”

  Benny put his ear to the computer speaker. The raucous chorus of “Following the Leader” still sounded pretty remote. “It’s definitely not me,” he said. “The football players and cheerleaders were right behind me. Listen to how far away they sound right now. This guy’s out there on his own.”

  A muffled sound came from the speaker.

  “Turn it up,” Benny said. “I think one of them just said something.”

  Virginia rewound the video and cranked up the sound.

  Benny leaned his ear to the speaker. “Sounds like ‘fun.’ He’s yelling ‘fun.’ Did you hear it?”

  Virginia nodded. “But how did we not hear him when we were standing right there an hour ago?”

  “Those stupid idiots were singing right behind us. He could have been shouting a foot away and we wouldn’t have heard it.”

  Benny switched off the sound.

  “Fun, fun,” Virginia was repeating. “Maybe we misheard it. Maybe they’re saying money? Maybe Brittany had a bunch of cash in her mascot suit, and they were trying to steal it.”

  Benny shook his head. “No, look at the way he’s just standing there. He’s not trying to catch her; he’s just . . .”

  “What? What?”

  Benny felt a shiver as he stared at the grainy shadow blocking the exit to the bridge. He’s closing in on her, he thought. He’s trying to trap her.

  Benny’s house, midnight

  Every day when Benny came home, his house felt like a theater set that had been carefully staged for his much-anticipated entrance. A glass of milk and a plate of Oreos sitting on the kitchen counter next to his Scientific American or whatever had come in the mail that day. His clothes freshly laundered and stacked neatly at the edge of his bed. An autumnal-scented candle burning on the living room table. Every surface spic-and-span and shining. It was a conspiracy between Benny’s mother and grandmother to make every detail perfect and pleasant, as if that could make up for the one huge and very imperfect aspect of the Flax household, which was currently slumped in the living room easy chair with the canned laughter of The Golden Girls blaring in his face.

  “Don’t make him watch that,” Benny said, setting his book bag down. His mom followed him inside.

  “Your grandmother’s watching it. And he doesn’t know the difference.”

  Yes he does, Benny thought, but he didn’t feel like having the same argument for the ten-thousandth time. He went over to the TV and changed the channel to PBS. It was a show about South American slugs, which wasn’t much better than The Golden Girls in terms of mental stimulation, but at least it was science.

  “What did he say today?” Benny asked.

  “Light cold no fine,” Mrs. Flax answered, as if “light-cold-no-fine” were one single word instead of four.

  Benny sat at the kitchen counter and pulled a National Geographic calendar from his backpack. He felt fidgety and overexcited. He wanted to go on a long walk outside to calm his nerves and review the events of the night over and over in his mind. But he had a job to do.

  In the square for October 3 he wrote light, cold, no, fine. Then he highlighted the word “cold” in yellow and “fine” in green. Yellow meant a new word; green meant a word his dad had said twice within the space of five days. There were more than fourteen highlighter colors in Benny’s system, and 480 words so far, most of them with only one or two syllables—words like “cup” and “door” from a man who had once said things like “orbital mechanics” and “hyperbolic trajectory” on a regular basis.

  Mr. Flax had been an aerospace engineer for twenty years. But sixteen months ago there’d been an accident on the test flight for the AeroStream V4 Spinetail, designed to be the fastest, most advanced plane ever commercially flown. It was the Titanic of planes, and just like the ship, it had sprung a leak. Mr. Flax was running diagnostics in the back of the plane when it depressurized. The tertiary backups failed to bring the aircraft down to breathable airspace, and the pilots stopped responding. As the plane seeped oxygen, Mr. Flax’s brain cells died by the millions. It was a full twenty minutes before the autoland system recovered. By then the pilots were already dead.

  Mr. Flax lived but was left with extreme brain damage from hypoxia. Benny had seen the CAT scans showing purple splotches indicating areas of his father’s cerebrum that were irreversibly damaged. But it was too depressing to think that the brain could be broken, like a ligament or a collarbone. It wasn’t just a muscle; it was the mind  ! Surely it was more than tissue and cells. Surely his old dad—his real dad—was in there somewhere, lost in that lavender-colored fog.

  To prove this, Benny had embarked on a project of obsessively documenting every word his father said, convinced that his father was trying to say something. The ironic thing was that before the crash, Benny and his dad could have talked all the time, but they hardly ever spoke to each other. Mr. Flax had been a workaholic and wasn’t home much. Few conversations from before the accident stuck out in Benny’s mind. There was really only one: When he was thirteen, Benny had discovered that the Spinetail was costing AeroStream eighty-eight million dollars to build, which seemed like an ungodly amount at the time. He remembered asking his dad if it was wrong to spend that much money on a faster plane when people in the world were starving and homeless. His father had answered, “Progress should never wait. If we waited for everyone in the world to be clothed and fed before we advanced ourselves, we’d have no civilization.”

  Now, on the sofa, that same man stared blankly at the TV, drinking from a child’s sippy cup decorated with bright cartoons of planes. Mr. Flax could still feed himself, but his left arm was paralyzed, and his right arm had periodic spasms and twitches that made normal glassware impossible. Nana had bought the sippy cup, cheerfully pointing out, “Look, it has planes on it!” Benny had almost cried.

  “Now what’s this foolishness about someone dying?” Mrs. Flax asked, dumping leftover spaghetti into a Tupperware.

  “A cheerleader jumped off the bridge,” Benny said. “I’m tryi
ng to figure out why. It’s for my club.”

  Mrs. Flax sighed loudly. “Well I’m sure no one asked you to. I don’t see why you have to create problems for yourself and make life difficult.” She glanced at Benny’s color-coded calendar. Obviously she wasn’t talking about Mystery Club.

  Benny stood abruptly. He scooped up his calendar and highlighters and dumped them in his book bag. He took his plate of cookies and started toward his room.

  “Good night.”

  “Do your homework,” Mrs. Flax called after him.

  Benny closed his door and sat at his desk. He pulled out his chemistry book and stared at it for a second. Then he pushed it aside. He reached under his desk and grabbed his freshman yearbook, flipping to his class and scanning the Ms.

  Montague.

  Angie’s and Brittany’s pictures were side by side. Identical faces, identical smiles. People thought of the two of them as basically interchangeable, which they’d never seemed to mind. In fact they exploited it all the time—dressing alike, wearing their hair the same, making little effort to carve out separate identities. But now one was a corpse, and one was still alive.

  What made Brittany different?

  Saturday

  The football field, 8:30 a.m.

  It was sunny but windy, a wind that accentuated the emptiness of the football field. It swooshed across the crisp green grass, with not a single body to offer resistance. Benny checked his watch. Virginia was late.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she panted as she ran up to him. “They were late serving breakfast.”

  “Oh,” Benny said. It was depressing, imagining the boarders having Saturday breakfast in the cafeteria. Empty tables, lukewarm eggs, toast from the bread heels left over from the sandwich bar. Always late because the weekend staff didn’t give a shit.

  “So what are we looking for?” Virginia asked, still catching her breath.

  “You don’t look for anything,” Benny said. “You just look.”

  Virginia stood still, trying to look like she was looking. A huge white cloud passed overhead. It was so quiet, it took her a moment to notice the sound of distant chatter. It was coming from the woods.