Killing Britney (6 page)

eleven

The
Computer Rebooter, where Bobby Plumley worked, was more like a shed than an office. The whole place spooked Adam out. It felt like it could easily be the lair of an evil scientist. It was out on the Washington Avenue strip, in a low cluster of windowless buildings not far from the gas station where Ricky had been killed. It had no sign, and instead of a front door, it had a retractable garage door that could only be opened by remote control. Inside, there were computers of all makes and models piled shoulder high in a ring around the messy work area, a long wooden table on which Bobby could play around with seven computers at once. In the darkness along one wall was a row of routers and servers; their red and green lights flickered like the control panels of a spaceship. The only real light came from a fluorescent rod that had somehow been jimmied so it hung loose over the table.

Bobby worked for a guy named Ted Dempsey, but Dempsey was never around, and Bobby ran the show, tearing apart and rebuilding motherboards and towers sometimes until four-thirty in the morning. That is, when he wasn’t fiddling with his web site or trying to hack into the Department of Motor Vehicles records. Right now, he and Adam were eating Doritos and playing EverQuest. His T-shirt today showed a drawing of a severed human arm on a plate; underneath, it read Tastes Like Chicken.

Bobby had embedded all sorts of cheats so that his EverQuest character would be unkillable. He explained to Adam that “this means I can go around hacking people up and stealing their money and basically doing whatever I want, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They can’t even kick me off the game because I’ve build an override to counteract the host commands.”

Adam was pretty handy on a computer himself. He knew all the cheats Bobby was using—they weren’t that hard to figure out—but playing an unkillable character was sort of boring. What Adam liked about EverQuest was the web of relationships that you developed throughout the world of the game. You had to think about the consequences of any action you took, and you had to work with the rest of the gaming community to really succeed. If you could just go and slaughter people, what was the point?

It was 10 p.m. and a school night for Adam—not for Bobby because he’d skipped a year and graduated early. Except for last night’s dinner in Ricky’s honor, it was also his first night off since he’d been hired by Amoeba Records, and there was no way he was going to waste it on doing schoolwork.

“So, you were right,” he said, shoving a Dorito into his mouth. “Britney got all weird when I mentioned your name. What did you do to her?”

Bobby’s gaze remained on the game. He continued typing commands into the computer throughout their conversation. “What did I do to her? The question is, what did she do to me!”

“Well, tell me.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Everything’s complicated. Life is complicated.”

“She’s just …” Bobby paused and frowned at the screen. “She’s a messed-up girl.” He started tapping the keyboard with a rapid vigor. “Look at that!” He grinned maniacally at Adam. “I just burned that mofo’s house down! Let’s go see what he’s got to steal!”

They played the game for a while—or Bobby played, and Adam watched. Figuring that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with his questions, Adam said, “I heard this great CD two days ago at my new job—”

“Oh, man,” Bobby cut him off, “I can get you whatever you want for free. I know how to get around all the firewalls. What do you want? Grab a blank CD from the shelf over there. We can burn it right now.”

Before they could get the process started, the metal grate that served as a door began rattling. The sound echoed ferociously around the room, bouncing off the concrete floor.

“That must be Melissa,” said Bobby. “Can you get it? You just have to push the button against that wall over there.”

To reach the automatic door opener, Adam had to watch his feet, picking his way across the room. Spare cords, loose mice, keyboards, and small green plates covered with wires and knobs were strewn everywhere. He actually had to climb over a wall of monitors.

Once the door was open, he discovered it was the same Melissa who was Britney’s friend, the redheaded girl who had rubbed her shoulders at the dinner, shivering outside. Well, that’s odd, he thought. But he didn’t mind her showing up here at all—last night, when she’d been wearing that blue crushed velvet gown, he’d thought she was beautiful, and now, here, even in her ski jacket and woolen cap, nothing had changed.

“Hi, Adam,” she said, as if she’d expected to see him, as if they’d known each other all their lives as opposed to having seen each other, what, maybe five times total, and always in passing. They’d never even spoken to each other.

Adam, trying to imagine what her face would look like without her glasses on, had to force himself to stop staring.

“Hi, uh, Melissa.”

As Adam pushed the button to shut out the cold and began climbing back over the monitors, Bobby yelled over to the two of them. “Adam was just asking me about Britney. He wants to know what I did to her.”

Melissa laughed. “Bobby didn’t do anything to Britney. Britney broke
his
heart.”

She made it back to the work area before Adam, and sitting down in the metal folding chair he had been using, she said to Bobby, “But that doesn’t excuse you from not making it yesterday. What was up? You told me you’d be there.”

“I was at the funeral; you just didn’t see me.”

“Well, you weren’t at the reception.”

“I wasn’t invited.”

“When have you ever waited for an invitation?”

Bobby shot her a pained look. He glancing at Adam, who had finally found his way back, and said, “There are more folding chairs over there by the servers.”

Adam gazed out into the dark back corner of the room. He could see the folding chairs, but he couldn’t see any way to reach them.

Melissa scooted to one side of her chair. When she smiled at him, he noticed she had a dimple on her right cheek. She patted the seat next to her and said, “Don’t even try it. You’ll kill yourself trying to climb over all that junk. Here. I stole your chair to begin with. Let’s share.”

God, was she beautiful. Her beauty was embedded in that dimple; it was soaked into the husky edge of her voice; it was deeper than fashion, deeper than skin. Adam found that he was suddenly hoarse. His voice cracked and he blushed as he said, “I don’t think Britney’d be happy to hear about us sharing a chair.”

“There are lots of things I do that Britney wouldn’t be happy to hear about,” she said, winking at him. “So Bobby, do tell. Why weren’t you there?”

Bobby glanced skeptically at Adam again, and then he shrugged. If he was trying to be subtle, he was doing a terrible job.

“Oh, don’t worry about Adam. He’s one of us,” said Melissa.

Though he wasn’t sure what she meant by this, it felt nice to hear Melissa say it. Since he’d arrived in Madison, he hadn’t felt like he belonged, really, anywhere.

Reluctantly, Bobby began to explain. “That funeral sort of freaked me out. I mean … Didn’t it freak you out?”

“You mean that weird clapping after Britney’s speech?”

“No, that was just some lughead asshole. I mean the way Britney was acting. She didn’t seem jittery to you?”

“She always seems jittery.”

“I don’t know, Melissa.” Bobby glanced at Adam again. “I thought I saw that look in her eyes.”

“What look?”

“That
look.”

“Well, obviously, she had that look again,” Melissa said. “She’s falling apart. That’s why I wish you had been at the reception.”

Adam broke in. “What are you guys talking about?”

Melissa turned to Adam. “Sometimes Britney can go to some pretty dark places. I mean
dark
places. Pitch-black places.”

Bobby jumped in to elaborate. “And the harder she tries to act like her life is perfect, the more you can bet that she’s breaking apart.”

They went on like this for almost an hour, explaining all kinds of things Adam had never noticed: That when she was especially tense, Britney had a way of rapidly, repeatedly cracking her jaw. That she used to hate the hockey thugs and their silly wives as much as Bobby and Melissa did, but after her mother died, she had become obsessed with them and made it her mission to become best friends with them. That her mother’s body had never been discovered. The assumption was that it had been pulled into the rapids and smashed on the rocks below Waukesha Falls.

“Jeez,” said Adam. “My folks told me she’d been having a hard time, but I had no idea any of this was going on.” He felt horrible. If he’d known all this, he would have tried harder to be nice to Britney. He’d been operating under the assumption that she was just a typical popular girl who judged everybody and was always looking for a way to hold on to her feeling of superiority. It felt to Adam now that he was the one who had been refusing to give
her
a chance. He promised himself that he’d show more compassion from here on out.

It was almost eleven-thirty and Mr. Johnson had told Adam to be home by twelve.

“So,” he said, “who’s going to cart me home? Melissa?”

Without looking up, Bobby said, “Yeah, Melissa, take him home. I’ve got some serious killing to do here.”

“I don’t know,” she said, winking at him as she grabbed her coat. “I don’t think I trust him alone with me.”

“Good call,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t trust me alone with you either.”

Once they were outside and headed toward the Johnsons’ house, he said, “What I don’t understand is, it seems like you two care about Britney a lot. Why does she hate Bobby so much?”

“Bobby? Well, he has his problems too,” said Melissa. Abruptly changing the subject, she pushed the play button on her car stereo and said, “Here, listen to this new CD I picked up last week. It’s incredible.” It was Belle and Sebastian.
Dear Catastrophe Waitress.
“It came out a couple of years ago, but it’s great, isn’t it?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“You don’t like it, do you?” She sounded truly disappointed.

“No, it’s not that. It’s—I love these guys. I had no idea anybody in this town had ever heard of them.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m full of surprises.”

A prickle of anticipation inched up Adam’s back. He hoped he’d have the opportunity to be surprised by her again and again.

They didn’t speak much on the ride home, but the music made Adam feel like they were growing more intimate anyway. He almost felt like it would be all right to kiss her when they got to Britney’s house, but she got very serious as she pulled into the driveway. He wondered if maybe he’d been imagining the whole thing and if she still thought of him as just that guy who lived in her best friend’s house.

“Listen,” she said. “You probably shouldn’t tell Britney about all the stuff we talked about tonight, okay? I mean, she’d kill me if she knew I still hang out with Bobby.”

“Sure,” Adam said. He was afraid he looked sort of dumb nodding like this. “No problem.”

She winked at him. “See ya.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

It wasn’t until she had driven away that he realized that they had a secret now. They had a secret! And a secret was almost as good as a kiss.

twelve

After
the final bell rang on Friday afternoon, Britney hid her head in her locker so she wouldn’t have to be confronted again by the pitying looks of her fellow students.

All day she’d been confronted by the eyes of freshman girls, of boys from the school newspaper, of the guys from Hummus, everyone staring, thinking, she was sure, There but for the grace of God go I. She knew that they wanted to impress their sympathy on her, but she wished they would stop staring. If everyone just acted like nothing had happened, maybe she could begin to feel normal again.

When Melissa wandered over, Britney was momentarily disappointed. She’d hoped to hang out with Erin and the other wives, to go somewhere with them and do something mindless, maybe watch TV, while snuggling into their shared memories of Ricky.

“Can I get a ride home?” asked Melissa.

Britney gazed down the hallway. There wasn’t a hockey wife within sight. She didn’t want to be rude, and she really hadn’t spent enough time with Melissa lately, so she said, “Sure.”

“I need to stop by the library. Is that okay?”

Britney nodded. Now that she’d committed, she couldn’t back out, though hanging around at the library was the last thing she wanted to do.

The two of them made their way across the parking lot toward Britney’s VW Bug. Their teeth chattered. Melissa’s heavy quilted coat was zipped up to her chin, her scarf wrapped tight, and she could withstand the cold. But Britney was wearing Ricky’s letter jacket, and even with the wool roll-top sweater underneath, she could feel the wind crawl in through the buttons. Despite her thick mittens, her fingers were numb.

The ice on the ground was thick and slippery—the girls had to take care with every step not to slip.

“Do you have some time? Let’s go to Fresh Grounds and grab a latte,” said Melissa. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

They didn’t look at each other as they spoke. It was so cold out that despite their coats, their muscles contracted and stiffened—any extra movement was another opportunity to expose some new bit of skin to the bracing wind.

“There’s this, um—oh, now I’m embarrassed—this boy I like.”

Britney spun on her and clasped her hands. “A boy! You mean like a real live boy? Of the human persuasion?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“Melissa, this is great. Look at you! You’re blushing!”

As they neared the car, Britney fumbled with her keys. Pressing the unlock button was hard to do with frozen fingers. While she fumbled, Melissa pulled her door open. Britney thought it was odd that the doors were already unlocked.

“I could swear I locked my car this morning.”

“Sometimes when it’s cold, you think you’ve locked it when you really haven’t.”

“No. I know I locked it. I distinctly remember hearing the chime and thinking about this car we had when I was little that used to say ‘a door is ajar’ every time I got in.”

“So,” said Melissa, changing the subject. “The thing is, you know him.”

“God, tell me already! I’m so excited!”

“Let’s get warm first.”

The two of them climbed into their respective sides of the car. As Britney settled into the driver’s seat, she heard something crunch underneath her. After fishing around for a moment, she pulled out a cracked jewel case. Under the clear plastic glimmered a blank CD. Someone had scrawled the words WITH LOVE on it in large block letters.

She froze up.

“Look at this,” she said, handing the CD to Melissa. “This is …” She shuddered involuntarily.

As Melissa studied the CD, Britney put her key in the ignition.

“Hurry up and turn the heat on,” she said. “It’s freezing in here!”

Melissa’s attitude annoyed Britney. One of the things she liked best about her friend was that she could always be relied on to put aside whatever she was thinking about to focus on the melodrama of Britney’s life. “You don’t seem too concerned,” she said.

“I want to tell you about this boy.”

“Whatever. I’m a little freaked out right now, Melissa.”

As soon as she’d opened the door, Britney had begun to feel incredibly anxious. It was as if she’d known, even before finding the CD, that her space had been invaded—as if someone had come in while she was in class and rubbed their greasy palms all over her stuff, not taking anything, but leaving a nasty scent behind.

In silence, Britney turned on the engine and flicked the heat up to high.

“Well, let’s hear what’s on it,” said Melissa with a little sigh that Britney took as a subtle criticism. She popped the CD into the stereo, and the two of them waited for what would come next.

From the very first notes, a chill crept down Britney’s back. The song began with soft finger picking on what sounded like an acoustic guitar. It had an almost Celtic air to it, the mystical far-off quality of a mythic dirge. She recognized it immediately. Her fingers tensed on the steering wheel. Her stare drove into the windshield. Then the lyrics began….

There’s a lady who’s sure
all that glitters is gold
and she’s buying a stairway to heaven…

After a few verses, the song began to change. Static overtook the melody, as though the song was coming from a radio station that was on the verge of breaking up. The static grew louder and more disturbing as the CD played on—now it sounded like machine-gun fire, a rapid assault of feedback.

Melissa gasped. “I think someone’s saying something. Is that a voice?”

Listening closely, Britney could heard it. A murmuring, threatening gurgle of sound that when she concentrated, she could make out as words.

“… deserved everything he got, and you know it. I only wish I could have stuck around to see him writhe in pain. … When I come for you, I promise, I’ll make sure I watch every minute of it….”

Britney shrieked at the top of her lungs. It was like she was hyperventilating. She suddenly felt so hot, no, so cold, no, so hot. She tore at her letter jacket, but in her frenzy, she couldn’t get the thing off. Somewhere—it felt like very far away—she could hear Melissa screaming too. She could feel Melissa’s hand on her shoulder; it felt like a tentacle, a slimy, twisty thing reaching to throttle her. She screamed louder, harder. “Turn it off! Turn it off!” But the words weren’t coming out right, and the horrible white noise played on and on.

Finally she couldn’t scream any longer and she collapsed onto the steering wheel, sobbing.

Melissa stopped the CD.

Neither of them spoke for a long, long time.

When Melissa did finally speak, she did so in even, soft tones. “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” Britney shouted between sobs. She cried for she didn’t know how long. “How did they know about ‘Stairway to Heaven’? That was our song. Mine. And Ricky’s. I mean, nobody knew about it except me and Ricky. It … We … It … And the way the guy was talking …”

“Someone’s been spying on you, obviously.” Melissa voice was soothing—in times of crisis, she was the best person to have around. She could be both firm and tender all at once. “We need to—”

A snowball exploded on the windshield, and the girls both screamed again.

Then, from nowhere, Adam was racing toward them, mounds of snow in both hands. He threw himself onto the hood of the car and rubbed the snow in like an overeager window washer. He grinned maniacally.

It was all too overwhelming for Britney. Melissa leapt from the car to confront Adam and Britney leaned her head on the steering wheel and let the sobs wash through her.

She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but when she finally felt calm enough to look up, Britney saw that they were both smiling. There was a sassiness to Melissa’s body language that Britney had never seen before. She dully registered that Adam must be Melissa’s secret crush. They kept glancing over at Britney in the car, and if she didn’t know Adam so well, she would have sworn that the expression on his face was one of concern.

Jumping back into the car, Melissa spoke curtly. “We have to call that detective what’s-her-name immediately. We have to tell her about this. Here. Do you have that card she gave you? I’ll do it.”

“No.” Britney struggled to hold herself together. “I don’t have it. I don’t want to talk to her. I want my dad. I want to talk to my dad.”

Melissa thought about this for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Come on, scoot over. I’ll drive.”

Riding off toward her father’s office in the passenger seat of her own car, Britney felt like her insides had been scraped out. Even though nothing had been stolen, she felt like she’d lost something, like she wasn’t safe anywhere, not even in her own skin.