She also gets her first real job (she’s earned money in the past babysitting and raking leaves, but she doesn’t count those), working at the drive-in snack bar three nights a week. It surprises no one that she proves especially adept at her duties and earns a promotion by her third month of employment.
She is also named captain of the varsity outdoor track team.
Gwendy still wonders about Mr. Farris and she still worries about the button box, but not nearly with the same nervous intensity as she once did. She also still locks her bedroom door and slides the box out from inside her closet and pulls the lever for a chocolate treat, but not as often as she once did. Maybe twice a week now, tops.
In fact, she’s finally relaxed to the point where she actually finds herself wondering one afternoon: Do you think you might eventually just forget about it?
But then she stumbles upon a newspaper article about the accidental release of anthrax spores at a Soviet bioweapons facility that killed hundreds of people and threatened the countryside, and she knows that she will never forget about the box and its red button and the responsibility she has taken on. Exactly what responsibility is that? She’s not sure, but thinks it might be to just keep things from, well, getting out of hand. It sounds crazy, but feels just about right.
Near the end of her junior year, in March 1979, Gwendy watches television coverage of the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. She becomes obsessed, combing over all the coverage she can find, mainly to determine how much of a danger the accident poses to surrounding communities and cities and states. The idea worries her.
She tells herself she will press the red button again if she has to and make Three Mile go away. Only Jonestown weighs heavy on her mind. Was that crazy religious fuck going to do it anyway, or did she somehow push him into it? Were the nurses going to poison those babies anyway, or did Gwendy Peterson somehow give them the extra crazy they needed to do it? What if the button box is like the monkey’s paw in that story? What if it makes things worse instead of better? What if she makes things worse?
With Jonestown, I didn’t understand. Now I do. And isn’t that why Mr. Farris trusted me with the box in the first place? To do the right thing when the time came?
When the situation at Three Mile Island is finally contained and subsequent studies prove there is no further danger, Gwendy is overjoyed—and relieved. She feels like she’s dodged a bullet.
20
The first thing Gwendy notices when she strolls into Castle Rock High on the last Thursday morning of the school year are the somber expressions on the faces of several teachers and a cluster of girls gathered by the cafeteria doors, many of them crying.
“What’s going on?” she asks Josie Wainwright at the locker they share.
“What do you mean?”
“Kids are crying in the lobby. Everyone looks upset.”
“Oh, that,” Josie says, with no more gravity than if she were talking about what she’d eaten for breakfast that morning. “Some girl killed herself last night. Jumped off the Suicide Stairs.”
Gwendy’s entire body goes cold.
“What girl?” Barely a whisper, because she’s afraid she already knows the answer. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she does.
“Olive… uhh…”
“Kepnes. Her name is Olive Kepnes.”
“Was Olive Kepnes,” Josie says, and starts humming “The Dead March.”
Gwendy wants to smack her, right in her pretty freckled face, but she can’t lift her arms. Her entire body is numb. After a moment, she wills her legs to move and walks out of the school and to her car. She drives directly home and locks herself inside her bedroom.
21
It’s my fault, Gwendy thinks for the hundredth time, as she pulls her car into the Castle View Recreational Park parking lot. It’s almost midnight and the gravel lot is empty. If I’d stayed her friend…
She’s told her parents that she’s sleeping over at Maggie Bean’s house with a bunch of girlfriends from school—all of them telling stories and reminiscing about Olive and supporting each other in their grief—and her parents believe her. They don’t understand that Gwendy stopped running with Olive’s crowd a long time ago. Most of the girls Gwendy hangs out with now wouldn’t recognize Olive if she were standing in front of them. Other than a quick “Hey” in the hallways at school or the occasional encounter at the supermarket, Gwendy hasn’t spoken to Olive in probably six or seven months. They eventually made up their fight in Gwendy’s bedroom, but nothing had been the same after that day. And the truth of the matter is that had been okay with Gwendy. Olive was getting to be too damn sensitive, too high maintenance, just… too Olive.
“It’s my fault,” Gwendy mutters as she gets out of the car. She’d like to believe that’s just adolescent angst—what her father calls Teenage It’s All About Me Complex—but she can’t quite get there. Can’t help realizing that if she and Olive had stayed tight, the girl would still be alive.
There’s no moon in the sky tonight and she forgot to bring along a flashlight, but that doesn’t matter to Gwendy. She strikes off in the dark at a brisk pace and heads for the Suicide Stairs, unsure of what she’s going to do once she gets there.
She’s halfway across the park before she realizes she doesn’t want to go to the Suicide Stairs at all. In fact, she never wants to see them again. Because—this is crazy, but in the dark it has the force of truth—what if she met Olive halfway up? Olive with her head half bashed in and one eye dangling on her cheek? What if Olive pushed her? Or talked her into jumping?
Gwendy turns around, climbs back into her cute little Fiesta, and drives home. It occurs to her that she can make damn sure no one jumps from those stairs again.
22
Sometime between the hours of one a.m. and six a.m. on the morning of Friday, May 25, a portion of the Northeastern corner of the Castle View Recreational Park was destroyed. The historic stairway and viewing platform, as well as nearly one-half acre of state-owned property, collapsed, leaving a bewildering pile of iron, steel, earth, and rubble below.
Numerous authorities are still on site investigating the scene to determine if the collapse was a result of natural or man-made causes.
“It’s just the strangest thing, and way too early for answers,” Castle Rock Sheriff Walt Bannerman commented. “We don’t know if there was a minor earthquake centered in this area or if someone somehow sabotaged the stairs or what. We’re bringing in additional investigators from Portland, but they’re not expected to arrive until tomorrow morning, so it’s best we wait until that time to make any further announcements.”
Castle View was recently the scene of tragedy when the body of a seventeen-year-old female was discovered at the base of the cliff…
23
Gwendy is sick for days afterward. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson believe grief is causing their daughter’s fever and upset stomach, but Gwendy knows better. It’s the box. It’s the price she has to pay for pushing the red button. She heard the rumble of the collapsing rocks, and had to run into the bathroom and vomit.
She manages to shower and change out of baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt long enough to attend Olive’s funeral on Monday morning, but only after her mother’s prompting. If it were up to Gwendy, she wouldn’t have left her bedroom. Maybe not until she was twenty-four or so.