Exposure (12 page)

The door to Mr. Schaeffer's office opened and Craig walked out. He didn't so much as glance at me as he exited. Miss Hen's phone rang once. She picked it up, listened for a moment, then looked at me.

“They're ready for you now, hon,” she said, sympathy in her voice.

I'd never been in the principal's office before. For some reason I'd expected expensive walnut furniture and a high-backed leather desk chair — an antique globe in the corner, perhaps. Instead, I walked into a messy, fluorescent-lit room with steel filing cabinets, a faded, decades-old poster of Bill Cosby that said “READ!” on one wall, and dusty Venetian blinds with several bent slats. Nowhere near as executive-looking as I'd expected.

Everyone in the room was standing except for Chief Towers, who was sitting behind Schaeffer's desk. Heavyset with his arms crossed, he gestured with his head toward the empty chair facing him. I took a seat. No one introduced the other two guys, but I could only assume they were detectives, too. My heart was pounding like a bad techno song, and my skin felt suddenly wet and clammy.

“Skye,” said Principal Schaeffer, who was looming behind the chief. “Let me reassure you that you're not in any trouble. You're a good girl, one of our most responsible students, and you needn't be alarmed — ”

Chief Towers raised his arm to silence him.

“Miss Kingston,” he said, his tone gruff. “Although this is not a formal questioning, I need to inform you for the record that we are tape-recording this conversation. You are under no obligations to answer our questions without a lawyer and/or your parents present, but as I've stated, this is not a formal deposition. As your principal explained, you are not in any kind of trouble, we're just trying to clarify a few things. Do you understand, and can we count on you to cooperate with our investigation?” I nodded and whispered my assent.

“Good,” he said. “Now, we've been led to understand that you were in attendance at the party which was held on Friday, November tenth, at the Winters's hunting shack. Is that correct?”

I nodded in the affirmative. My hands were trembling so I clenched them and grasped the bottom of my skirt.

“Miss Kingston, you'll need to answer vocally, with a yes or no, so the tape recorder can pick it up.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling sheepish. “Yes.”

“Had you ever been to this property before?”

“No.”

“Did you see Duncan Shaw at the party?”

“Yes.” I looked at the ceiling, half expecting to see some harsh interrogation light shining down on me. But these were all yes-or-no questions. Maybe I could make it through this unscathed.

“Did you speak with him that night?”

“No.”

“From what you saw of him, was there anything that struck you as unusual?”

“What do you mean?”

“Meaning, did he seem like himself? Did he look upset or angry at all?”

“I only saw him for a second,” I said, carefully minding my words. “He seemed fine.” The chief scrawled something illegible from my perspective on his yellow legal pad. What was he writing? It was strange to think that Tiffany Towers probably had this man wrapped around her little finger at home. He seemed like Godzilla to me.

“What time was it when you actually saw Duncan?”

“I'm not sure … maybe eleven-ish.”

“And were you drinking alcohol?” My face turned red and I glanced at Principal Schaeffer, horrified. Would answering truthfully lead to my expulsion? He offered back a compassionate look.

“It's okay, Skye … you can be honest.” I brushed my hair back off my face with a still-quavering hand.

“I had a little.”

“And how much do you consider ‘a little'?”

“One shot and a few sips of vodka. That's all.” I was so ashamed of myself. I wanted to melt into the floor.

“Would you have described yourself as drunk?”

“No.”

“Did you see Duncan get into an altercation with anyone at the party?”

“No.”

“Now, when the game of flashlight tag got underway that night, who were you with?”

“Pardon me?” I glanced up from the desk, confused.

“Did you partner up with anyone?”

“No. I was by myself.”

“By yourself?”

“I didn't participate. I stayed behind.”

“Were you the only one who stayed behind?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“So you weren't with any of the others?”

“Yeah … I mean, no.”

Chief Towers stood up from the chair, leaning onto his palms, which were planted firmly on the desk. He was looming over me now, but still looking at his notes.

“Did you see who Duncan might have left the property with?”

“No,” I answered. “Tiffany, I guess.”

“I
did not ask
you to guess, only to answer my questions!” My stomach started doing somersaults. “What did you do while the others were gone?”

“Nothing. I waited for them to come back.”

“And how long did it take before people came back?”

“Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe a little longer.”

“Who returned first?”

Oh god, here's where it got dicey. If I answered that Craig and Beth were the first ones back, I might be contradicting their testimony. If they wanted to position themselves far away from Duncan's whereabouts, they might have changed this detail of the story.

“Miss Kingston, I'll ask it again. Did you see who was the first to return to the property?”

In his phrasing of the question, I discovered my out. Seeing was different than hearing, was it not? I'd
heard
Craig and Beth, but I didn't
see
them until they were amongst the others at the campfire. Here goes …

“No, I didn't see the first people back. I was trying to stay warm in a car and when I got back to the bonfire, there were already about a dozen people there.”

“At the bonfire — no one said anything about Duncan?”

“No,” I answered truthfully.

“Nothing whatsoever?”

“It was only later, when Tiffany started freaking out.”

“And what was the response to that?”

I paused before answering truthfully again, with as much tact as I could muster. “People joked that Duncan was probably just trying to give Tiffany the slip.” I cringed inwardly. “He had a history of going MIA on his past girlfriends, so no one seemed worried.” Chief Towers flushed.

“And you, Miss Kingston? What did
you
think?” Oh shit. I tried to answer truthfully again without actually divulging any pertinent information, though the only thing I could think of was the tiny spot of blood I'd seen on Beth's jacket when they dropped me off that night.

“I don't really hang out with this crowd normally, so I didn't know quite what to think.” It was true, to a degree, but it wasn't the
god's honest
truth. The sentence came out involuntarily, as if I were lip-synching the words while someone else spoke. Chief Towers, still leaning on the desk, stared at me with penetrating eyes, as if he was not entirely satisfied with this last remark. The longer he fixed his eyes at me, the more I started to crumble inside. He obviously knew there was something I wasn't saying. Should I just end the nightmare now and come clean with what I knew before I sunk into this quagmire any deeper? Might it not come as some twisted sense of relief to be called on my hair-splitting bullshit and have the truth come tumbling out for the whole world to hear? I knew I couldn't keep up this charade, so it would be better that things ended here and now, once and for all. Just as I was about to relent and tell everything, Principal Schaeffer stepped forward and whispered something in the chief's ear. The burly cop looked dubious, but Schaeffer nodded once more, as if to corroborate what I'd just said.

“I think Miss Kingston has learned a very tragic lesson about hanging out with the wrong crowd, isn't that right, Skye?” said Schaeffer. I cleared my throat but said nothing, stunned that the conversation had just taken this tamer turn. I held my breath and hoped that this was almost over.

Chief Towers flipped through a few more pages on his clipboard and gave me a grim glance, as if I'd just completely wasted his time.

“Well, I suppose that will be all, then,” he said.

“Thank you very much, Skye,” said Principal Schaeffer. “Please return to your sixth-period class. Miss Hen will write a note excusing your absence.”

“That's it?” I said, confused. “You're finished with me?”

“Thank you for your assistance.”

Was that it? Did I just run the gauntlet unharmed? I breathed in deeply, grabbed my messenger bag, and walked numbly out of the office, only to momentarily freeze on the other side of the door. Beth was in the same chair in the reception area where I'd been seated before. Why did she always elicit the same startled reaction from me? As I waited for Miss Hen to fill out my absentee form, I glanced at Beth again out of the corner of my eye. She was clutching the oversized designer purse she used for a book bag against her torso with both arms. Her legs were crossed and her left ankle boot tapped the air in a nervous, impatient twitch.

“You can go in now, Beth,” said Miss Hen, reaching up to hand me my pass. As Beth slid by me, I wished, for one second, that I could telepathically tell her not to be frightened and that everything would be okay. But, really, why should I tell her that? She was the cause of this whole thing! Accident or not, she knew the truth about Duncan's death, and maybe if it all came to light, I could stop feeling so twisted up in my gut every night before I fell asleep. Besides, now that Craig was being such a jerk to me, I was getting mighty close to not caring whether he ended up in trouble anyway. Hiding Craig's cell was the last thing I would do to save his butt, and he would never even know I did it. Why did I care what happened to some cute boy who once deigned to give me the time of day? He wasn't my problem anymore, and Beth shouldn't be, either. The police had no reason to involve me any further in their investigation now that I'd navigated their murky line of questioning with my conscience intact. Things were going to be okay after all, at least where I was concerned. And someday, sooner or later, the nagging feeling in the back of my brain would take up residence somewhere else. It just had to.

IF YOU ASK ME, there's something creepy about a talking doll, but my baby brother was officially enraptured with Tickle Me Elmo. He sat on our living room floor for the better part of Christmas morning, heaving uncontrollable belly laughs at the red Muppet's giggling antics. I knew I was going to have to find a way to deactivate Elmo's battery after a few more hours of this, but in the meantime, I, too, was cracking up watching Ollie shriek and bounce and clap his hands as if he had never in his short life seen anything so hilarious. Perhaps he hadn't.

My mom padded from the kitchen back into the living room in her candy-cane covered flannel peejays, her ceramic “Trust me, I'm a med student” mug newly refilled with coffee. She handed the cup good-naturedly over to Dad, who was sitting on the sofa. Then she plopped down on the couch and nestled right up against him. What in the hell was going on with these two? This overt cuddling was not like them, at least, not in my recent memory. I turned my head from them, not wanting to make them feel self-conscious lest I ruin the moment.

They seemed atypically happy with each other in the last few days, out of nowhere rocking a Norman Rockwell vibe. Mom's college classes were suspended until after the winter break, so she was home more, and she'd even baked a pecan pie, which came out a little soggy, but still. I couldn't account for the sudden turnaround. I'd never spoken to her about the night I'd discovered her
not
working at the Regent, but now, maybe it was a moot point.

I would have investigated their newfound reconnection a little further were I not so distracted by the laptop I had unwrapped earlier this morning from “Santa.”

“Dad installed Photoshop on it for you,” Mom said, winking at me.

“Well, I know my young Skye-walker still uses film,” Dad said, “but I figured maybe it would come in handy for you at some point. We can look for a sale on a scanner/printer in the Sunday circulars and find a good deal.”

“Thanks, Dad. I love it.”

“It's only a used one. But it's not too old, and a buddy of mine from work loaded it up with software.”

“It'll be great for you to take with you to school next year,” Mom said.

“Oh, hey, about that,” I said, perking up even more, “I've applied for a couple of scholarships that the guidance counselor at school thinks I've got a shot at. I mean, I'm not getting my hopes up or anything, but you never know.”

I'd officially completed all my college applications and submitted them well before the deadline, even managing to write what I thought was a pretty decent personal essay despite everything that was weighing on me these last few weeks. I was finally starting to feel like I could breathe again having gotten that off my plate. Now, the waiting game.