The Fever (19 page)

You could feel the frenzy in the gym ramp up more and more with each word. Listing all these possibilities, even to dismiss them, seemed like a bad idea. The word
syphilis
felt like a fever in Tom's own brain.

“But it's important to note,” she continued, “infections don't discriminate. If this were an infection, we'd see more people affected and not just young girls. But the process is ongoing. The main thing we need is your patience.”

“Why would we trust you now?” a voice bellowed from within the body of the twitching crowd. “Any of you? You're the ones who pushed your poison down these girls' throats.”

Tom moved forward a few steps, closer to Kit now, and saw it was Dave Hurwich, a tankard of coffee in his hand, a sheaf of curling papers under his arm.

“Lined them up like concentration-camp victims,” he added, rising to his feet as the student-council rep with the portable microphone ran toward him.

“Sir,” Sue Brennan began, “if you are referring to the HPV vaccine—”

“Principal Crowder, why did you give it to them?” a woman up front called out, voice shaking. “I'm not against shots, but this isn't like the measles. My daughters can't catch HPV in school. Why did you make it mandatory, given all the risks?”

“Mrs. Dunn,” Crowder said, stepping forward quickly, “the vaccine was not mandatory. But HPV
is
a virus. No, you can't catch it from a doorknob, but—”

“Are you going to allow sex in the halls next?” someone shouted. “Because that's the only way they could catch it at school.”

Dripping with sweat now, the mounting anxiety in the gym crackling loudly in Tom's ears, Tom shifted a few feet, hoping for more space, more room to breathe.

It was an odd thing, to disagree with everything everyone was saying but at the same time share the dread behind it.

“When are you going to admit we're likely dealing with a hot-lot situation here?” It was Dave Hurwich again, shouting and waving papers in his hand. “You've been playing Russian roulette with our daughters!”

“Sir, if you're referring to rumors that there may have been a bad batch of the HPV vaccine, that's highly unlikely,” Sue Brennan replied, her voice just starting to break as she tried to be heard. “Vaccine lots contain thousands of doses. If that were the problem, we'd be facing a citywide or even regional crisis.”

Hot lot, bad batches—this was the first Tom had heard about any of it. He felt negligent, wondered if he should at least have been reading up on all this instead of just waiting for someone to tell him what went wrong.

“I wonder what guys like Dave Hurwich did before the Internet,” Kit whispered, rubbing the back of her neck, the peacock-feather tattoo flaring. “Don't you sometimes wish you could have a school without parents?”

Tom looked at her and she seemed to catch herself, her eyebrows lifting in mild alarm. “I mean parents like that,” she added, nodding toward the rising noise up front.

“Why are we even talking about the vaccine?” a woman up front shouted. “We know the Court girl didn't get it. That's all been a costly distraction.”

There was a low roar of approval from all corners of the gym.

“That's true,” Sue Brennan began, her voice nearly drowned out by the noise. “Kimberly Court did not receive the vaccine. Due to a yeast allergy, she—”

“The Court girl's the one speaking the truth here,” the same woman interrupted. “Didn't you hear her video?”

“Are you a reporter?” a male voice barked from somewhere. “I've never seen you before!”

The woman stood now, and Tom recognized her: Mary Lu, Bailey's mother. A member of the Dryden Land Trust, of Energy Watch, of Safe Dryden. Tom had signed dozens of her petitions, had once even let her sucker him into a phone bank about pesticide drift.

“My daughter attends this school,” Mary Lu was shouting at the man, voice breaking. “And I have as much right as you to—”

Dozens of voices reared up across the gym, shouts and yeas and boos.

“Can we please keep some kind of order here, please?” Crowder was saying, another screech from the sound system as he tried to drag the microphone stand to himself.

A few yards away from Tom, Carl Brophy, the physics teacher, waved his hand vigorously until the student-council kid found him with the microphone.

“Excuse me,” he said. “What about the obvious explanation? That this isn't something coming from outside but from inside these girls' heads?”

“Hear, hear,” a tired-looking man in front agreed loudly but somehow wearily from his seat. “As a doctor, I'm pretty skeptical of any epidemiological event that affects only girls—”

A billow of hisses, claps, and shouts swept through the gym.

Tom glanced over Kit's shoulder but could no longer see Lara Bishop.

“It only affects girls because they were the ones shot up with poison,” Dave Hurwich said, face surging with blood.

“—and from what I've heard, the affected girls have troubled home lives,” the doctor continued. “Girls without fathers in their lives, broken homes. Emotional issues.”

A great ribbon of noise seemed to unfurl across the gym, and in the row closest to Tom, a woman leaped to her feet.

“What does that have to do with my Tricia?” she said, nearly bounding forward, looking like she wanted to shake the doctor, any of them, by the lapels. “Until yesterday, she was always a happy, normal girl!”

“Mrs. Lawson—” Principal Crowder tried, stepping toward her.

“Ma'am,” the doctor said, “I don't know your daughter, but do you?”

More shouts and jeers.

“How does a divorce or whatever explain why her head turned to one side so far I thought it might spin,” Mrs. Lawson cried out, her voice splintering. “She said it felt like her skin was burning off. I wanted to call a priest.”

She snatched the microphone from the white-faced student-council rep and turned to the audience.

“Tricia hasn't had any trauma,” she announced, seemingly to everyone, the microphone piercing with feedback. “She's a varsity athlete. She's a beautiful girl. She never did anything wrong.”

“Jaymie was just happy, going along,” Dave Hurwich said, rising beside her, voice breaking, touching the woman's shoulder gently. “She was as happy as can be.”

At just that moment, there was a loud snap from one of the high windows: its rusty prop rod had slipped loose.

Suddenly, a spray of rainwater shot forth and landed, sizzling, on the audio speakers, which fizzled and crackled.

“Be careful!” Tom called out as several sparks flew, a group of parents jumping back.

The room burst into a new level of noise and confusion, the speakers popping and squealing, a sense of cascading panic.

The superintendent hijacked the portable microphone from the student-council boy himself.

“Everyone stand away from the equipment,” he said. “Can we all just try to stay on point here?”

“But you're not listening!” shouted Mary Lu. “This school district spends a king's ransom on refrigerating a goddamn ice rink, but when it comes to protecting our—”

“Mrs. Lu, we've received your e-mails and—”

“You keep talking about what might be
in
the girls,” she said, stepping forward, sneakers squeaking on the wet wood. “What about what's
in
the school. In the walls. Under the floors.”

Tom looked down at his feet, at the splintery shellacked floor. It didn't seem any more likely a cause than the vaccine, or at least not much more, but even he could feel the hysteria. All the things Georgia used to say. About this town, this rotting place.

“The school passed all prior air- and water-quality inspections,” Sue Brennan said, her face looking slicker now under the lights.

“Isn't it true that the school is heated by those natural-gas wells just a few hundred feet away?” Mary said, shouting even louder now, voice gaining confidence. “And that some of those tanks have leaked onto the football field? Some trees died. You walk through it and your ankles are covered with black powder. Wasn't the school told to dig up the affected soil?”

The stir was loud and immediate, the floorboards seeming to thrum, the gathered sense of gathering something.

“That powder is just common grass smut,” called out Crowder, but without the microphone he could barely be heard, except for the word
smut
. “We sprayed—”

“It's important to note,” Sue Brennan interrupted, talking over him rapidly, “just like infections, environmental causes do not discriminate. If the cause were environmental, we would see a wide range of people affected, not just these few girls.”

The cavernous space seemed to explode with diffuse panic: hollers and howls, countless arms raised above heads, fingers pointing like lightning bolts.

Up front, Julie Drew's mother was keeling as if about to swoon from the heat and terror.

“Get her some water!” someone called out, inciting a new spasm of shoving bodies and tumult.

More and more, Tom sensed that if he stayed a moment longer, he would start to feel it too. Feel this sense that nothing could protect his daughter from anything because everything was out to doom her. To annihilate her.

Looking over Kit's shiny head, he searched once more for Lara Bishop. She was definitely gone.

In her place, a pair of oblivious students were making out with long, ravenous stretches of tongue, as if none of these dangers could ever befall them. The cluelessness he wished for all of them, amid this.

Looking past them, through the crossbars of the bleachers, he saw a woman with a long dark braid who looked familiar.

It took a moment, but as she turned to talk to the man next to her, something in the stiffness and purpose of the way her body moved triggered his memory.

The woman in the parka. The one in the classroom questioning Deenie.

She wasn't wearing the parka anymore, just a dark raincoat.

And the man she was talking to was a uniformed cop.

“Isn't it enough that our lake is forever polluted by who knows what sins of the past?” Mary Lu was shouting, her voice strong and searing.

But everything else fell away for Tom. Because it seemed suddenly, palpably clear that his daughter had been talking to the police that afternoon and didn't know it.

The woman and the cop started walking swiftly toward the back exit.

Placing his hand on Kit's shoulder—her body jumping from it—he moved past her and walked quickly toward the pair, disappearing behind the heavy exit doors.

“Hey,” Tom called out. “Hey, stop!”

There was a thud from the school's east breezeway, something hitting the glass.

A light arced across the floor.

Eli walked slowly toward it, the same spot he and Brooke had stood a few hours ago.

That's where
, she'd said, pointing to the bushes.
Right there.

Outside, there was a blur of movement, the strobing of flashlights.

From the dim corridor, just before the breach into the breezeway, he peered through the glass.

Three figures in dark jackets, caps. Light blue plastic gloves like at the hospital.

One of them was lifting something off the ground with a stick. A bit of pink fabric, spattered with mud.

Another was holding a shovel, its tip grass-stained.

A camera flashed and Eli jumped back, as if they were looking for him.

And that made him think of something.

He couldn't be sure if he'd have thought of it sooner if he hadn't smoked with Skye, or if he wouldn't have thought of it all.

Walking briskly now, he returned to the trophy case. The banquet picture.

The shaggy-haired kid next to him.

“You two are sporting quite the hockey flows,” the photographer had said to them both. “You think you're Guy Lafleur or something?”

The forward from Star-of-the-Sea, Sean.

The one who worked with Deenie.

Sean. Sean Lurie.

The night air like a wet hand over his mouth, Tom pushed through the doors, caught sight of the woman and the uniformed cop walking purposefully ahead of him, across the parking lot.

Running now, the fierceness in his chest nearly took his breath away, reminded him of when the kids were little, those moments you'd realize how vulnerable they were. A decade ago, that visit to DC, he'd made Deenie hold his hand everywhere, made her walk on the inside of the sidewalk, her rampart against chaos, against pain.

“Stop!” he called out again, chest clutching.

Both of them swiveled around.

“What were you talking to my daughter about?” He panted, hand to chest.

“Excuse me,” the woman said, blinking.

“My daughter, today. You locked her in a room.” His voice sounded rough and unfamiliar to him.

She squinted, then appeared to recognize him. “Mr. Nash,” she said, “I tried to tell you this afternoon, those were standard questions. The room was not locked.”

The officer next to her stepped forward slightly, his hands at his waist.

“You didn't say you were a cop,” Tom said. “That's what you are, isn't it?”

“Detective Kurtz,” she said. “And all we were doing was gathering information.”

“What do you have to do with any of this?” Tom said. “It doesn't make sense.”

“Sir, can you keep your voice down?” she said, but all he could see was the woman, the flat line of her mouth, and the way everything felt wet and close and she was not giving him anything.

“We're here to help you,” she said, “all of you.”

“How does interrogating my daughter help anybody?” He couldn't stop his voice from sounding loud, ragged. The way they were looking at him, standing so still it made him feel like he was lurching.