“Wow, I think you got five syllables into that ‘Mom,’ a new personal best for you.”
This was Josie’s cue to say it again, holding the final syllable so it sounded like the “om” chant in a yoga class. But her heart wasn’t in it today.
“It’s expected, you know,” her mother said after realizing that Josie wasn’t up for their usual game. “Being sad. You might be sad for a long time.”
Like the rest of my life?
“It’s not just being…sad,” she said. “It’s…” But there was no way to finish the thought. She felt sad and guilty, yet resentful of the guilt, convinced she didn’t deserve it. None of this was her idea.
She picked up the remote control, began working her way up and down the channels again. Her parents had only basic cable, so there wasn’t as much to see as there had been at Kat’s, for example, where the Hartigans had all the movie channels, ten for HBO alone. Perri’s parents didn’t even have cable, and they limited their children’s “screen time,” as they called it, which had just made Perri crazed on the subject, plopping in front of Kat’s set for hours at a time, surrendering her vivid imagination to much lesser ones. Kat and Josie had to flatter her outrageously to get her away from the television, but Perri had grown out of it. Eventually. That was the way it was with Perri. Her manias were like the flu bugs that knocked her flat every winter. You just had to let them run their course.
Josie preferred the local stations anyway, with their cheesy ads for cars and copiers and insurance. This time of day, these channels were filled with shows about judges-sarcastic, adamant, bossy judges, who cut so quickly to the heart of the matter, making questions of right and wrong look so simple. You-pay the rent. You-fix his car. You-replace the dress. The gavel banged and the losers bitched once outside the courtroom, but the judge’s decisions were final.
30
Dannon Estes could tell he made the detectives uncomfortable. Some people have gaydar, but Dannon had gay-hating-dar. Not that these guys were haters. Their reactions were more subtle than that. The younger one, who reminded Dannon of Alec Baldwin-circa Married to the Mob, moving through that hot-tub mist, back before he had gone totally to seed-had the general air of bafflement common to the hyperhets. What? You don’t like tits? You don’t like pussy? What’s that about?
The older guy, the fatherly one-now, he was the type who felt sorry for Dannon. His stepfather had much the same air when he was forced to spend time with him, as if Dannon were missing a limb or something. Disabled, or differently abled, as Glendale students were encouraged to say.
Then again, Dannon had made a point of informing these police officers he was gay, singing it out loud and proud. He couldn’t really blame them for being focused on it, given that it was the first thing he had told them about himself.
“We understand you went to the prom with Perri Kahn,” the older guy had started, and Dannon had promptly interrupted him.
“Just as friends. I’m gay. But I suppose Mrs. Kahn told you that.”
“Um, no, that didn’t really come up.” The older guy was so clearly lying, determined to ignore the fact. You would think that Dannon had farted or something. “But you were friends, right?”
“Right.”
“Good friends?”
“Pretty good, but just the past year.” Dannon, used to the fierce precision of the Glendale divas, would never be caught embroidering his social status in any way. That was one of the school’s deadly sins, an offense for which one would be taunted and punished. “We knew each other from theater stuff, going way back, but we didn’t start hanging out together until last fall.”
“Would you say you were close?”
“I suppose so.” I hoped so. I only built the past year of my life on that concept-being Perri Kahn’s new best friend.
“She tell you anything about her…plans?”
“How do you mean?” Shit, that was the wrong way to say it. “No, she didn’t tell me she had planned anything.”
“But she told you something.”
“Not really.” Technically true. She hadn’t told him anything.
“You know, it’s just unusual for a thing like this to happen without anyone having an inkling.”
Inkling. What a funny word. If Perri had been here, they would have exchanged a look or stifled their laughter. Inkling. It was like the riff from The Sunshine Boys, the whole laundry list of what words were funny, what words weren’t. Pickle, cucumber…
“No, I didn’t have an inkling.”
“Back at Columbine,” the handsome cop put in, “there was a Website and everything. And in some other school shootings, kids told people what they were going to do, showed off the gun, told people when it was going to go down.”
“Yeah, only this wasn’t Columbine,” Dannon said. He was feeling strangely fearless. He had always been a behind-the-scenes guy, but maybe he was a better actor than he realized. “I mean, that’s what Ms. Paulson keeps telling us. Columbine was, like, about the school’s social hierarchy. This was something private among three friends that just happened to play out on school property.”
“But why?”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.” And this was true, too. Perri had never explained her anger. Was it because she didn’t completely trust him? Then again, to the extent that she had confided in him, he had betrayed her, so perhaps she was shrewd enough to realize that Dannon didn’t deserve her trust.
“Was she unhappy? Did she speak of suicide? Did she have some kind of grudge toward the dead girl?”
He should never have agreed to speak to these men. Now that he was in too deep to turn back, he should just keep feigning ignorance. But Dannon had never been able to shake his own fascination with the story of the imperious three, broken at last.
“Perri never spoke of it. To me. To anyone.”
“The shooting?”
“No. I mean, yes-she never said she was going to shoot anybody. But she also never told me why she had stopped talking to Kat.”