Chapter Twenty-One

The next day, Thursday, I’m up at an hour even my father couldn’t criticize.

I make my coffee so strong it tastes like mud. I might have gotten four or five hours of sleep max, even though I was home before eight o’clock. I spent the night sweating out cheap alcohol, staring at the ceiling, and twisting between different memories and half-formed ideas.

I slug my mud-coffee and watch Barrens shake off its nighttime mist. I try to see Barrens as a stranger might, and in the early light it looks beautiful. Maybe Brent was right and I am on some kind of witch-hunt. Maybe I want Optimal to be crooked, just so I have something, anything, to straighten out.

Maybe my obsession is all a fantasy.

Or maybe not. But this morning, I’m going to follow Brent’s advice: it’s time for a tour of some of Optimal’s good works.

The Barrens-OPI Community Center is halfway between the high school and the gates of the Optimal Plastics Complex, directly across the road from the Westlink Fertilizer & Feed store. The theater that Brent mentioned is complete; it’s a modern, steel-and-glass exterior completely at odds with the squat brick shoeboxes that otherwise define architecture in Barrens. It’s not even nine A.M. and there are already cars in the newly poured lot, and though the doors are locked, when I press my face to the glass I can make out a blur of movement inside. I’m surprised to see Misha in the lobby, pacing, phone pressed between shoulder and cheek.

When she spots me, she hangs up without saying good-bye and slips the phone into a pocket. She hesitates for a fraction of a second before unlocking the door.

“Abby.” Today, she is dressed the part of vice principal, in a cheap pantsuit and a lavender blouse. “You pop up everywhere, don’t you? I’m starting to think you might be following me.”

“Small town. You said it yourself—there’s nothing else to do but be in everybody’s business. Besides, it isn’t every day Barrens gets a community center.”

“True enough. But we’re not actually open yet. Can I help you with something?”

Last night, Brent told me that after Kaycee left, Misha had told him that she’d wanted a clean break. But if Kaycee confessed her desire to disappear, she might have confessed other things.

“I was supposed to meet somebody from Optimal for a tour before opening,” I lie, seizing the opportunity to talk to her. “I made an appointment, but I’m afraid she thought I said yesterday. No wonder she’s not picking up my phone calls.”

She hesitates again, then bumps the door open a little wider with her hip. “Come on,” she says. “Although there isn’t much to see. Only the first phase is complete.”

“I was so curious. What an ambitious project.”

“Oh, this isn’t half of it. Eventually, we’ll have a reception venue, plus a gym for after-school sports programs. Classrooms for alternative education, too.”

The building is expansive, open, and airy, and sunlight filters through the skylights.

“Wow. It’s…” Ugly. The kind of ugliness only a shit ton of money can produce. But of course I won’t say that. “Ambitious. Doesn’t even feel like Barrens in here, does it? Must be costing a fortune,” I say brightly.

Her eyes slide to mine only briefly. “Optimal is financing most of the project,” she says. “We’ve got government grants as well. Taxes pay for the rest.”

“You seem very…passionate.” What I actually mean is: very involved.

“Principal Andrews and I both pushed for it. Before, our students had nowhere to go and nothing to do after school,” she says. “Often their home lives are a big part of the problem. When there’s nothing else to do…Idle hands find trouble.” She reaches a door that points the way to the theater stage, and again she holds the door open for me.

“Have you ever thought it might be a problem that so many people depend on one company?” I keep my voice casual, as if I’m just thinking the question myself.

She glances at me. “Why would it be a problem?”

“For years Optimal has been dogged by rumors of pollution, of corruption, cover-ups.”

“Rumors aren’t facts, Abby. Thank God. Otherwise we all would have been in trouble in high school. You especially.”

That’s another point to Misha. I smile as sweetly as possible. “True. And smoke isn’t fire. But sometimes where there’s one, there’s the other…No one wants to hold Optimal accountable. In fact, no one will even entertain it.”

“We’re proud of Optimal here,” Misha says pointedly. “I don’t see how that’s a problem.”

I pick my words carefully. “They’ve bought a lot of love, is all I’m saying.”

I’m worried she’ll get angry. Or maybe I’m hoping for it—a crack in her veneer. But this only seems to amuse her. “Last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”

“Well, that depends on who’s buying,” I say.

“The problem is that people think in black and white. They think they can have the good without the bad. But everything that’s good for one person is probably bad for someone else. Life isn’t like the Bible says it is. It isn’t a choice between good and evil. It’s about choosing which evils you can stand.”

“So you admit Optimal is evil.”

That, at least, gets her to smile. “All I’m saying is that if Optimal has made mistakes, do a few rashes here or there mean we should shut down the biggest employer in the area?”

“We’re not just talking about rashes, and you know it. We’re talking about chemicals that cause major damage. People aren’t disposable. People shouldn’t have to sacrifice their lives and their health to put food on the table.”

“Oh, Abby.” She sighs. “I envy you. It must be nice to know you’re right so much of the time.”

A knot of anger rises in my chest. “I don’t know I’m right. But I know what’s not right.”

“Do you?” She tilts her head to squint at me. “Take Frank Mitchell as an example. He makes his living selling pornography.” The way she says it, the word has about a hundred syllables.

“Pornography isn’t illegal,” I say.

She raises an eyebrow. “Fine. Sure. But let’s say he has a customer, a normal man, husband and father, who keeps a little porn stash on the sly, nothing serious. And then, let’s say, at some point he says what he’s really after are the younger girls. Much younger. And it turns out this nice, upstanding man, with his nice, upstanding family, has a fetish for schoolgirls.” She says all of this calmly, with immense self-control, as if we’re still talking about plans for the auditorium. All the hairs lift on the back of my neck. “Now let’s say Frank Mitchell sells him a magazine where the girls look much younger than they actually are. But of course they are of age. Paid professionals. The man goes home happy. If he doesn’t, the man will just go out and find the real thing.”

I am so stunned I just stare at her.

She spreads her hands. Innocent. “You see, some people would think Frank Mitchell had done a terrible thing by selling that kind of magazine. But it would still be the right thing.”

“Or,” I say, trying to keep the tremor from my voice, “he could simply call the police.”

“The man would just deny it.” Misha shrugs, as if the point is so obvious it barely needs to be stated. Then: “Should we continue the tour?”

I want nothing more than to run—from Misha, from this cold palace built on Optimal money to save the kids it might be pumping full of poison, from the crazy economy of sacrifice that Misha believes in. But I follow her mutely through another swinging door.

Misha raises the lights and the hallway takes shape in front of us: dark-painted walls, and a row of student photographs framed on both sides, surrounded by constellations of paper stars.

“These are our Optimal Stars,” she says brightly. “The recipients of the Optimal Scholarship. Remember the scholarship program I mentioned? For several years now, we’ve worked with Optimal to grant full or partial scholarships to a handful of students who show academic promise. Most of them struggle with difficult home lives. Some have had disciplinary problems. But the program really turns them around.” She sounds like she’s reciting from a brochure. For all I know, she might be. “The first was Mackenzie Brown. She was a ballroom dancer. Don’t get that much around here.”

She indicates a girl with a beauty-queen smile. Actually, all the girls have beauty-queen smiles—and out of eighteen scholarship recipients, only two are boys. One portrait in particular stops me. The girl looks distractingly like Kaycee: a waterfall of blond hair, wide-spaced blue eyes. According to the little brass nametag, her name is Sophie Nantes.

“Why so many girls?” I can’t help but ask.

“Well, we keep need in mind as much as we do talent,” Misha says. “Plenty of colleges offer their own sports scholarships, but most of the money is for the male teams, so there’s that. And there are more local opportunities for our male students who don’t want to go to college. Farming, construction is making a comeback, entry-level jobs at Optimal. That kind of thing.”

The door at the end of the corridor leads us to the auditorium. “Next year, we’ll mount our first musical production,” she says. Her voice is swallowed by the vast space. Tiers of seats climb into darkness. “And we have forty students already signed up for a two-week music camp in August. Half of them will be playing on donated instruments. Can you imagine? For years, the marching band had to meet in the back parking lot while the cheer team got the cafeteria after school. Now they’ll rehearse here.” She opens her arms to the silent stage. For the first time, she seems happy. Not just happy, but joyful, alive with energy and pride. She turns to me. “And do you know what was here before?”

I shake my head.

“Nothing.” There’s a dark satisfaction in her eyes. “Absolutely nothing at all.”