We Know It Was You Page 3

  “It’s the cops,” Benny said, nodding toward the voices. “There are about ten of them at the bridge. Probably destroying the crime scene.” He gave an impatient sigh. “Not that they know it’s a crime scene. Idiots. They still think it’s a basic suicide.”

  Virginia looked at him. She knew Benny was weird about police, but it seemed kind of unreasonable to call them idiots. The only reason he knew it wasn’t a “basic suicide” was because she had spotted the camera in the woods.

  “So . . . are we waiting for them to leave?” she asked him.

  “No. It’s a mistake to be obsessed with the bridge,” Benny said. “The field is where it started. It’s where she started running.”

  He kept staring at the field. Virginia glanced at him a few times.

  “She was sitting on the sidelines,” he said, “looking that way.” He pointed across the field. It was an unusual football field because there was only one side of bleachers. On the other side was a small bit of woods, half concealing a three-level parking garage. They were the only school with a garage in addition to a lot, a recent one up in an ongoing facilities race between Winship and its rivals.

  “Maybe she saw someone on the roof of the garage. Someone she wanted to get away from. And then when they saw her running into the forest, they ran down to corner her at the bridge.”

  “Stop, stop,” Benny said, holding up a hand. “It’s way too early to start forming a narrative. You’ll confuse your brain and start seeing things that aren’t there.”

  “What, like hallucinating?” Virginia asked.

  Benny rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna look under the bleachers.”

  He ducked under the metal stands. The air instantly felt about five degrees cooler. Dirty paper cups and napkins littered the ground. Benny took out his phone and snapped a few pictures. A torn, crumpled French quiz. Someone’s half-eaten hot dog, lying in its own ketchup like it was a blood splatter. A few cigarette butts, but not too many. Winship had an incredibly strict no-smoking policy, and for most people it wasn’t worth getting kicked out of school just to seem cool. A used condom caught his eye, half shoved in its torn wrapper. Benny frowned at it. People were so gross and callous. If Benny were going to have sex, he hoped he’d treat his ejaculate with a little more reverence. Not in a perverted way—it’s not like he’d frame it or something—but didn’t people realize their fluids were the wellspring of life? You don’t just pump them out and leave them on the ground.

  “Benny!”

  Benny jumped, and his head slammed against the metal stands. “Ow, fuuu . . . ,” he said, stumbling forward. Benny never cursed, at least not completely. He always stopped himself before the whole word came out.

  “BENNY!” Virginia shouted again.

  “What, what?” Benny said, crouching to get out from under the bleachers.

  “I’m hallucinating, just like you said.” Virginia’s voice was weirdly calm.

  “Um, what?” Benny said, rubbing his head.

  Then he saw it. A blond boy had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the field. At first it didn’t look like he was going anywhere. He was staggering in small circles. He looked lost, or drunk. He wore red pants that stood out starkly against the green grass. He continued spinning aimlessly in circles, then he bolted suddenly.

  “Is that . . . is that Gottfried?” Benny asked. But before Virginia could answer, Benny took off running.

  The woods, 9:12 a.m.

  It was like a strange replay of the night before—Benny following someone into the forest, and Virginia following him. But this time it was daylight, and the forest was empty, and instead of chasing a mascot, they were chasing a German exchange student.

  How is Benny so fast? Virginia wondered as she strained to keep up with him. He wasn’t on any sports teams. She knew he took some weird karate class that was about trying to punch people with your mind or something. Maybe he had some supernatural mind-body connection that allowed his body to siphon power from his brain in times of physical need. Or maybe he secretly worked out. He could be ripped under those voluminous turtlenecks, and no one would ever know.

  She reached the edge of the woods, leaping over a line of yellow police tape. She almost smacked right into Benny.

  “Where is he?” she panted.

  Benny didn’t say anything, just pointed.

  Gottfried stood hunched at the edge of the bridge, his hands on his knees. He was vomiting his guts out. The brackish spew splattered across the ground and the edge of the bridge. Virginia recognized the congealed chunks of cafeteria oatmeal, which had already resembled vomit in the first place.

  “Oh my God,” she said, covering her eyes. “Gross.”

  “Uh, you okay?” Benny shouted to him. Gottfried stumbled and coughed quietly. Then he wretched again. Leaves formed unflattering shadows on his face.

  “I don’t think he heard you,” Virginia said.

  “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” A cop was climbing up the steep riverbank toward them. But he was balancing a clipboard and a tray of coffees and almost immediately started to slide back down the mud. One of the coffees tipped over and sloshed on his shirt. “God daymit,” he hissed.

  “Gottfried, come on,” Virginia called out. Gottfried was staring vacantly, wiping his mouth. He looked baffled and ill. Virginia strode toward the bridge and gently took his arm.

  “You kids git outta here!” the cop shouted. “You blind? That’s po-lice tape!”

  “He’s from Germany!” Virginia shouted, dragging Gottfried away from the bridge. “Police tape is red there! He was confused!”

  Benny was already far ahead of them. Virginia led Gottfried through the trees back toward the field. It felt like leading a cloddish horse. He kept stumbling and slowing her down.

  “Geez, Gottfried, what the hell were you doing over there?” Virginia demanded as soon as she’d dragged him into the end zone.

  “Give him a second to breathe,” Benny hissed at her.

  They could hear the policeman still shouting, but he was far-off now. Apparently he’d decided it wasn’t worth the effort to scale the muddy bank and go after them. Soon even the shouts stopped. Lazy fools, Benny thought. If some random kids trampled over his crime scene, he wouldn’t just let them run away.

  Gottfried was squinting up at the sky. He shook his head a little and blinked. Some of the color was returning to his face. Benny studied him. Gottfried was kind of a spacey, weird guy. No one really knew what his deal was. He’d appeared in the ninth grade as part of a one-semester exchange program. But then when everyone came back from Christmas, Gottfried was back too, with a room in the Boarders. And then he was back the next semester, and the next semester. He’d been at Winship for almost two and a half years now. Evidently he was very attached to the place, but Benny couldn’t imagine why. He wasn’t particularly popular. People thought he was funny and goofy, but more in a laughing-at-you way. He was known for saying strange things—like once Benny had heard him tell a teacher he needed an extension because he thought he’d done his homework, but actually it had been a vivid dream. People assumed his English was bad, attributing his weirdness to foreignness, even conflating the two. But Gottfried’s English was fine, Benny knew. He was just a weird person.

  “Are you really drunk or something?” Virginia asked tactlessly.

  “Hm . . . eh . . . ,” Gottfried mumbled.

  Benny’s phone buzzed. “Ugh,” he said, checking it. “I have to go. My grandma’s picking me up for temple. Um . . .” He looked from Virginia to Gottfried, and back to Virginia. Was it wise to leave her alone with him? It wasn’t her safety that concerned him—Gottfried was harmless, and Virginia could take care of herself anyway. It was the fear that she’d screw up his investigation somehow. Tell Gottfried the wrong thing, ask him the wrong question.

  “So . . . I guess . . . ,” he said stupidly.

  “I’ll take him back to the Boarders,” Virginia said.

  “Sure, just don’t, you
know . . . ,” Benny said, eyeing Gottfried. He didn’t seem to be paying attention, but Benny couldn’t risk being explicit.

  “Don’t what?” Virginia asked obtusely.

  Benny fidgeted with his phone. “I dunno. Whatever. I’ll call you later. Bye.” Then he turned abruptly and sprinted from the field.

  The Boarders, 10:15 a.m.

  “Would you feel better if you took a shower?” Virginia asked, eyeing a tiny fleck of vomit on Gottfried’s shirt.

  Gottfried shook his head, which didn’t surprise her. People avoided showering in the Boarders on the weekends, because for some reason the hot water tended to run out. It was a running joke that the boarders always smelled on Mondays—an affectionate joke, for the most part, but one that nevertheless emphasized their general apartness.

  “Well . . . do you want some tea or something?” Virginia offered. She started opening and closing cabinet doors, looking for the herbal tea Mrs. Morehouse kept stocked in the common-room kitchen. Mrs. Morehouse was the Boarders’ house mom. She was supposed to live with them and supervise their every move. However, in her ancientness, she seemed to grow disinterested in her duties, making up for long stretches of absence with fierce disciplinary tirades whenever she randomly appeared. The tea she liked was always fruity flavors paired with an abstract quality, like “passion fruit persuasion” or “peppermint spice tranquility.” Zaire Bollo, the British girl—or part British, who really knew—read the ingredients list out loud once and declared that it contained no actual tea, just artificial flavors. Zaire was always complaining about the food in America, which Virginia thought was snobbish. Gottfried was from Europe too, but he never complained.

  “No sank you,” Gottfried said. His accent was faint, but you could always hear it when he made the “th” sound, which came out like a hiss, instead of soft and velvety like it was supposed to.

  Virginia flopped onto the sofa next to him. It felt weird to be hanging out together. She wasn’t sure if she should leave. People always assumed that since there were so few of them, the boarders were all best friends and had orgies every night—cooped up with all those empty rooms. But actually they tended to feel kind of awkward around one another. The building was just too spacious and too quiet. There was a “Boarders Bash” in the common room once a semester, but it was always dysfunctional—everyone showed up at different times and missed the others, or else they just refused to relax and ended up pretending to go to the bathroom and never coming back.

  Gottfried stared at the wall while Virginia chewed her thumbnail. I’ll call you later. Had Benny actually said that? He’d never called her before, but he’d said it like it was no big deal, like they talked on the phone all the time. Just don’t, you know. . . . And what had he meant by that? Don’t lose Gottfried? Don’t make out with him? Virginia glanced at him. Maybe Benny saw something she didn’t. Maybe Gottfried was in love with her. Or maybe he was Brittany’s murderer, and what Benny was saying was Don’t get killed. That would be so like him, to send her off with a murderer while he went to synagogue with his grandma. Benny never let her know what was going on.

  “How did you know police tape in Germany is red?” Gottfried asked suddenly.

  Virginia looked at him. “Huh?”

  “What you told da police officer. Have you been to Deutschland?”

  “Oh! Um, no, I just said that. Is it really red?”

  “Ja . . . ,” he murmured. “Polizeiabsperrung . . .”

  People were always commenting on Gottfried’s eyes. They were so blue they were fake-looking. No imperfections or flecks or brown or gray—just a seamless ring of pure pale aquamarine. Virginia made herself look away. She didn’t want to be like everyone else, going gaga for Gottfried’s eyeballs. She liked to think of herself as a person who was unimpressed by superficial things.

  “What were you doing out there?” she asked, redirecting the conversation. “Were you channeling the mascot or something?”

  “Hm?” Gottfried’s eyebrow cocked curiously, in a way that Virginia couldn’t quite read.

  “You did the same weird dance as Brittany,” Virginia pressed, “and then you ran to the bridge just like she did.”

  Gottfried shrugged, and then yawned hugely.

  He’s on drugs, Virginia decided. A long, silent moment passed.

  “I sink I will take a small siesta now,” Gottfried announced. “I am so tired . . . tired all da time.” He stood up and looked right into Virginia’s eyes again. “You helped me today. It was very kind. Sank you.” Then he bent down in a swift, smooth motion and kissed her cheek. Before she felt it, she smelled the faint rotten odor of his vomitus breath on her face. It made her stomach turn. But then she felt his lips, and her stomach turned again, in a different way.

  “You’re welcome . . . ,” she said lamely.

  Gottfried stood up and left the room. Then she heard him say, “Oh,” as if he’d bumped into someone in the hall. Virginia stiffened. Was someone there? Was someone listening in on them? Virginia scanned their conversation in her mind. Had she said anything weird or incriminating? She got up quickly and poked her head into the hall. Gottfried was gone. A door shut upstairs. And then it was quiet—that familiar sound of no one being there.

  Congregation Mikveh Israel, 10:30 a.m.

  Benny paced back and forth in front of the row of rabbi portraits. He turned his face away from them; some of the portraits were the creepy kind where the eyes follow you, and Benny didn’t feel like dealing with their reprimanding gaze.

  “Well, what was his facial expression when you mentioned Brittany’s name?” he was saying in a half whisper.

  “It’s hard to describe,” Virginia said over the phone. “It was like . . . when a dog hears a sound it recognizes? Like its food being opened?”

  “Huh . . . ,” Benny said, not quite sure what to make of that. “Not, like, guilty or anything?”

  “No, he didn’t look guilty. Mostly he looked incredibly spaced out. I think he was on drugs.”

  Benny could hear the children’s choir singing, which meant they were about to start the Torah service.

  “I have to go,” Benny said. “Keep an eye on Gottfried. If he leaves the Boarders, follow him.”

  “Okay,” Virginia said. “Anything else I should do?”

  “Get ahead on your homework. It could be a big week, so school can’t be in the way.”

  “Okay. I have a paper due Thursday, but I’ll do it now.”

  It was always surprising how obedient Virginia could be. She never argued with him or tried to be in charge. It was strange for someone so pushy and assertive.

  “Should we go to that vigil tomorrow?” she asked.

  “What vigil?”

  “Oh, there’s a thing at the fountain, to light candles and stuff. Everyone’s going.”

  Everyone’s going. Benny usually never heard about these sorts of things until they were already over and “everyone’s going” had become “everyone was there.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” he said. “We should definitely be there.”

  The Boarders, 2:30 p.m.

  She had lost him almost immediately. Surveilling someone was pretty much impossible if you didn’t have a car. Virginia reread her pathetically brief report, trying to come up with ways to pad it and make it look more impressive.

  Subject was in his room for an hour and a half, sleeping probably. At 1:22 someone showed up and started throwing rocks at his window to wake him up. It was the delivery guy from Domino’s. Everyone at the Boarders calls him Corn Flakes because he has cornrows and really bad dandruff. He tries to hang with us all the time, but pretty much only Gottfried will talk to him. They drive to the gas station sometimes to buy cigarettes. That’s probably where they went, but I couldn’t figure out how to follow them.

  There was a ton more she could say about Corn Flakes—how he was obsessed with Lindsay Bean and always got her free toppings, how he tried to take her to prom and Lindsay was so embarrassed she prett
y much died, and how he supposedly went to Georgia State but was more likely just a townie loser. But was all that intel or just gossip? It was hard to know the difference.

  Post siesta, subject looked refreshed and revived. He didn’t seem sick anymore. He’d changed his pants.

  Virginia frowned, erased the part about changing his pants, then wrote it back in again. She didn’t know what was important to report. Maybe in some weird universe Gottfried’s pants could unlock the Mystery of the Suicidal Mascot.

  Gottfried and Corn Flakes had this elaborate high five they gave each other, which struck me as interesting because I didn’t think they hung out all that much. But maybe it’s just one of those high fives that all dudes preternaturally know. I will investigate this and report back.

  She folded up the paper and went to the common-room computer to google “guy high fives.” The results were pretty useless, like guys high-fiving their dogs or accidentally smacking each other in the faces. She came up with a great plan to ascertain whether the high five was a standard dude one or unique to Gottfried and Corn Flakes: She’d wait for Gottfried to come back in the hope that they would do the high five again, but this time she’d be waiting with the camera. She’d film the high five, study it, and practice it until she could do it perfectly. Then she’d go up to Gottfried and do it, and if he was incredibly shocked, she’d know the handshake was personal between him and Corn Flakes.

  And then what? she thought, suddenly discouraged. What would that even prove? That Gottfried and Corn Flakes were buds? So what? Total myopic fixation.

  “Myopic fixation” was what Benny called Virginia’s principal weakness as an investigator. She’d looked up “myopic” in the dictionary; it meant being shortsighted. And “fixated” meant being obsessed. Together they meant a tendency to get sidetracked by small details.

  Zoom out, she thought, and found herself envisioning the Earth from outer space. Christ, not that far, she told herself. She closed her eyes. What did football, boobs, and a German exchange student have in common?