We Know It Was You (11 page)

“I'm going to go home and rest for a while,” Brittany was saying, reading from a piece of paper in front of her. “But I just wanted to say how much everyone's love and support means to me. Thank you for all the flowers and brownies and cookies and cards. And I appreciate everyone cooperating with the police as we figure out what happened on Friday night. I hope none of you ever have to find out what it feels like to be locked in a closet for sixty hours with no food or bathroom. But I do hope you get to find out what it feels like to be as loved as I feel right now, because it feels amazing!”

The reaction from the crowd was deafening. “WILDCAAAATS!” someone shouted, and then everyone was
shouting it. That was the weirdest part of all this—the sudden Wildcat zeal that had seized everyone, as if Brittany not being dead were the result of school spirit.

“And you all look beautiful in your tiaras!” Brittany shouted, smiling stupendously. Then she took Angie's and Corny's arms, and they walked her off the stage as the audience gave her a standing ovation.

Mr. Choi, Virginia couldn't help noticing, had been pointedly left out of Brittany's speech. No one wanted to spoil the school-wide emotional high of Brittany being alive by dealing with the creepy, baffling fact that, in her place, Mr. Choi was dead. They'd finally caught the body, and it wasn't a young blond cheerleader. It was a middle-aged Asian man with a tattoo of a saxophone on his left butt cheek. Which meant it hadn't been Brittany filming the locker room footage; it had been Mr. Choi himself,
inside the suit
. The idea made Virginia so hyper she could barely sit still. All those girls with their boobs out, giggling and jiggling around, no idea that a middle-aged man with a saxophone butt tattoo was hiding in plain sight, watching them. Probably with an erection! It was gross and thrilling and weird all at the same time, and Virginia had never felt more thrilled in her life. Benny, on the other hand, looked wilted and defeated. Virginia rolled her eyes at him. He was just mad he hadn't figured it all out himself.

The principal took the podium, beaming with smug pride, like they all had him personally to thank for their
favorite cheerleader being alive after all. “We'll see you at the spirit show on Friday, Brittany,” he called after her. Then, to the crowd, “Sign-ups are on the bulletin board in the main hall. Let's make this the best spirit show ever, whaddaya say, Wildcats?”

The crowd roared wildly in assent. Then the bell rang, and people began filing out of the assembly hall. Everyone was grinning and talking and waving their tiaras in the air.

“So what now?” Virginia asked Benny. He was slumped in his seat. Virginia copied his body language, slumping down too. “At least there's one less pervert in the world,” she said.

“One
fewer
,” Benny corrected. The pervading story seemed to be that Mr. Choi had drugged Brittany and locked her in the pom-pom closet so he could sneak into her mascot costume and watch all the cheerleaders undress. Some of the football players were now claiming they'd known all along that the mascot was Mr. Choi, and that they had in fact heroically
chased
him from the field that night to spare the girls from his pervy glances. Which made no sense, but no one seemed to care. Everyone's feelings were so jumbled and disorganized—the joy that Brittany was alive, the relief that they didn't have to be sad anymore, that they could return to their self-involvement, overshadowed the desire to understand what had actually happened.

Only Benny and Virginia knew how far it went—that Mr. Choi had not only been hiding in the costume, but
had actually been videotaping the whole thing. There were still a lot of questions. Why had he run to the bridge? And who was that mysterious figure in the video, the one forcing him to jump?

“Someone must have caught him,” Virginia said, trying to reanimate Benny. “So he ran from the field, but then got cornered at the bridge.”

“If that were true, it would mean that this entire time that person knew Brittany wasn't really dead. They knew it was Mr. Choi.”

“Can you think of anyone whose mourning seemed fake?” Virginia asked. It was getting quiet in the assembly hall as it emptied out.

“Everyone's mourning seemed fake,” Benny said. “Mourning
is
fake. It's just a performance we carry out in society to signify grief and cope with our own mortality.”

“Okaaay . . .” Virginia looked at him. “You can take off your tiara now. We're the only ones left.”

Benny lifted his hand, but then dropped it, as if suddenly lacking the energy. His gloom made Virginia impatient. There was still a ton they didn't know. It wasn't like the mystery was over.

“The locker room,” Benny said. “
That's
where it started—not the football field. I can't believe I made such a stupid error. We should have gotten to her first. Who knows what we could have found.”

“We can still look around,” Virginia said, but she knew it
was a lame suggestion. The pom-pom closet was cordoned off now, and no one could get near it. And questioning Brittany seemed like an unlikely proposition, at least until the protective wall of cheerleaders and their boyfriends withdrew from around her and things got back to normal.

“And anyway, it's good to make mistakes, because then you can learn from them,” Virginia said, feeling stupid immediately. Had she ever said anything less interesting in her life?

“Don't try to pep-talk me,” Benny said back. “Just let me beat myself up. It's part of my process.”

“Okay . . . Do what you gotta do, I guess.” Virginia got up and left Benny to his brooding.

The sophomore lounge, 10:00 a.m.

“Every time I think about it, I get goose bumps all over my body.”

There was the crack and hiss of Coke cans being opened as Mrs. Hope passed them out to all the girls. The whole school had been separated into girl-only and boy-only groups so they could relax and be safe and talk about their feelings. The atmosphere in the school had changed in the hour since the assembly. Brittany had gone home, and it was like everyone's joy and excitement and relief had gone with her. Now they were glum and lost again, and the teachers were forcing them to talk about Mr. Choi, and how it felt to realize there had been a pervert in their midst.

“I mean, the locker room was our sanctuary,” Corny was saying. “Like, our special private pep fortress.”

I've seen your boobs,
Virginia thought. It was hard to look at Corny without seeing the locker room footage playing before her eyes.

“I'm supposed to wear the wildcat costume this Friday,” Kirsten Fagerland piped up. “But I refuse. I'm not going to do it. That mascot violated us.”

I've seen your boobs too.

“That's fair,” said Mrs. Hope, taking a long sip of her Coke. “No one's going to make you do anything you don't want to do.”

Virginia felt lucky she'd ended up in Mrs. Hope's group. Mrs. Hope was one of the few cool teachers at Winship. She wasn't going to be awkward or creepy or tell the cheerleaders it was their own fault for being beautiful. Apparently Mrs. MacDonald was telling her group that if they didn't want perverts obsessing over them, they should ask the school to buy more conservative cheerleading uniforms.

“I think about all those times Mr. Choi asked me to stay late because my cello was out of tune,” said Mandy Li. “It always sounded tuned to me. Now I'm thinking he was just trying to get me alone.”

There was a collective shudder in the room.

“It's important to feel safe in your own school,” Mrs. Hope said. “It's important to feel safe in your own body. But it's going to take time.”

“If Mr. Choi weren't already dead, I think my boyfriend would probably kill him,” Corny said proudly. “I always feel safe when I'm with Winn.”

Next to her, Angie Montague sighed. “Brittany is so brave,” she said. “But I'm not. I just want to wear a burlap sack and hide in my room forever.” She folded her arms as if to protect her breasts from the leering world. Not that it made any difference. Virginia had already seen Angie's boobs and could see them now in her mind—naked and fresh and full, sparkling with glitter and jiggling as she laughed.

“What about you, Virginia?” Mrs. Hope said. “How are you feeling?”

“Um, I don't know,” Virginia said carefully. She couldn't just blurt stuff out the way she used to—she had to protect Mystery Club and their information. “I'm not a cheerleader and I'm not in band,” she said, “so I probably wasn't on Mr. Choi's radar. I don't think he even knew me.”

Mrs. Hope nodded, giving her an appraising look. “But even if you didn't know Mr. Choi personally, you're still a part of the community he affected. . . . Do you feel safe?”

Virginia looked around. She didn't know what she felt. Creeped out, definitely, but something else too . . .
excitement
. Excitement that people weren't necessarily what they seemed. Because if everyone was what they seemed, Virginia was certain she was going to die of boredom and disappointment. She'd had enough disappointment in her
life; it was like people just lined up to let her down, and then acted like it was her own fault for expecting anything else. If there was one thing she'd learned in Florida, it was how much people will resent you for expecting them to be anything but predictable and petty and passionless.

“I think it's a mistake to be obsessed with safety,” she said to the group. “Safety is boring and it makes people weak. If people are always safe, they never have to learn how to stick up for themselves.”

Everyone looked at her.

“Is that how you feel?” Mrs. Hope asked. “That people should learn to stick up for themselves?”

Virginia shrugged. “I dunno. In the Boarders we do it all the time. Sometimes they don't open the cafeteria, and we have to take the bus to the grocery store just to get food. But you never hear us complaining.”

“It sounds like you're complaining right now,” Kirsten said.

“Well I'm not,” Virginia snapped back, unsure how the conversation had veered off in this direction. “I'm just saying that there are worse things than being looked at.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . like . . .”
Like not being noticed at all.

Room 202, 10:15 a.m.

“Respect,” Coach Miles declared, leaning confidently against the teacher's desk. It was weird seeing him in a classroom instead of on one of the sports fields. But everyone was
mixed up today. Benny had ended up in a group with mostly jocks. He suspected he was there to provide diversity, both ethnically and intellectually, a responsibility that made him self-conscious and annoyed.

“Let's talk about what you can do to show the ladies respect. Imagine what it's like to be a girl. You got this smokin' bod that everyone wants to get a peep at. Can you imagine what that feels like? No, you can't, because you're dudes, and your bodies are disgusting.”

Everyone laughed.

“I'm serious; no one wants to see that,” he said, pointing a finger toward Chase Creevey's crotch. “No one wants to see your hairy chest or your veiny dick! You're lucky if a girl will look twice at you! But imagine, y'all—what if you had to go through life being ogled and stared at from dusk till dawn?”

“I don't think I'd care,” Chase said, grinning. “Bring it on!” Chase was so stupid, he was always taking the bait like that.

“Well think again, asshole,” the coach snapped. Benny tensed. Maybe the football players were used to hearing profanity in school, but he wasn't. Coach Miles plowed on. “Because what if the people ogling you were stronger than you, and faster than you, and could probably
rape
you.”

The room was suddenly silent.

“Not so cool now, huh? And what you need to understand is that every one of you is a potential rapist. You've got the
hardware.” He made a crude, ball-cupping gesture. “And you don't have to be a big stud, either. Even ol' Scooby could be a rapist.”

Everyone laughed. Benny froze, feeling like his cheeks were on fire.

“Scooby the rapist!” Chase cried, delighted.

“Do you need a Scooby snack, Scooby?” someone else asked.

“Okay, okay, you get the point,” Coach Miles said quickly, realizing what he'd started. “So what can you do to make sure you
respect
the ladies and never rape them accidentally. Well first of all, throw out your dictionary. You need to learn
girl language
. And in girl language, everything means no. No means no; I don't know means no; maybe means no. Being drunk means no. Being a lot younger than you means no.”

“Being asleep means no,” Chase added. Everyone snickered and looked at Big Gabe, who had famously given cunnilingus to his girlfriend while she was asleep during the class trip to Washington, DC.

“Well what if they say
yes
?” Trevor Cheek spoke up, a huge smirk on his face.

“News flash, stud,” Coach Miles snapped at him. “Sometimes even yes means no. So how can you tell? Well here's what you do, guys. If she says yes—and don't fuckin' count on it—if she says yes, you reach up her skirt and feel around. If she's nice and lubricated—”

Everyone groaned.

“Shut up, shut up. If she's nice and wet, then you go ahead and seal the deal. If she's not, then sorry buddy, yes means no, and you better seek other accommodations.” He made a jerking motion with his hand.

Oh my God,
Benny thought, staring at the floor in horror. If only he'd gotten into Mr. Rashid's group. They were probably just having study hall.

“Well what if she's wet but says no?” Chase asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“No trumps wet,” Coach said authoritatively. “Sorry, Chase. Body and mind must be in agreement. I'm telling you this for your own good. I'm trying to keep you out of jail. So what else can we do to respect the ladies?”