The high school at Twin Lakes Collective is separated from the middle school and elementary school cluster by a long stretch of well-tended soccer and lacrosse fields, a looping ruddy-colored track, and the football stadium, standing like an alien spaceship in the middle of all that rolling green.
When we pull into the parking lot, I’m surprised to find it almost full: I’d forgotten all about the Fourth of July parade.
“Christ,” Brynn mutters. “Glitter and glee clubs. Just what we need.”
Every year, hundreds of kids aged five to eighteen march next to homemade floats and mascots from various local businesses, from the school all the way down to the gazebo in the park at the corner of Spruce and Main. I’m surprised they didn’t cancel it this year. They’ll be skirting downed tree branches and sloshing through gutters bloated with rainwater. Then again, what better way to celebrate America’s independence? Land of the free, the brave, the stubborn, the stupid.
“Pull around the gym,” Abby says. “There are usually extra spaces behind the weight room.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe this was a bad idea. We could come back tomorrow.”
“It’s a great idea,” Abby says. “No one will even notice us. We’ll blend in.”
Doubtful. Brynn and I are two of the most hated girls in Twin Lakes.
Up near the cafeteria, dozens of preteen girls wearing identical uniforms twirl batons and practice cartwheels. From somewhere in the distance comes the clamor of instruments tuning up. On a stretch of grass that divides the dumpy Life Skills class trailer from the admin office, a woman is trying to wrestle her screaming son into a costume. I’m not exactly sure what he’s supposed to be, but multiple arms give him the look of a patriotic bug.
“So your mom’s a teacher here, huh?” Brynn leans forward, resting her elbows on the front seats. She smells like my shampoo. She insisted on showering and changing before we left the house, although she put on the same ratty skinny jeans. At least she changed her shirt. This one is black and says Godzilla Is Coming in ominous silver letters. As always, she looks not just effortless, but as if the idea of effort was invented for people far less cool. People like me.
“Uh-huh. Music,” Abby says. She’s been typing on her phone and now she looks up. “No luck on Lillian Harding, by the way.”
“Who?” Brynn says.
“Lillian Harding. Remember the mouthpiece we found in the shed? I googled Lillian Harding in Twin Lakes, Vermont, and related to the murder. Nothing. It was a long shot, anyway. Stop here.”
A forty-person marching band, ages eight to eighty, mills around on the grass in front of the football stadium, near the picnic benches, all of them tuning and tootling and drumming to individual rhythms. Brynn covers her ears when we get out of the car.
We start across the grass toward the stadium entrance, avoiding the crowd. Instinctively, I put my head down, like I always do in public, and I notice Brynn tugs her hood up. Only Abby looks unselfconscious, swishing along in her skirt, humming a little, as if the noise the instruments are sending up is actually music. I can’t find any rhythm in it. I picture the dancers in my head twitching, having a seizure.
We pass into the stadium, where the noise is, at least, muffled. The grass is brilliant green and neatly clipped. Purple-and-yellow banners, many of them sporting an image of an angry wasp, the TLC mascot, hang, listless, along the stands, or have been driven down by hard winds into the mud.
“Okay.” Brynn takes off her sunglasses. “Remind me what we’re supposed to be looking for?”
I ignore her. “Purple and yellow,” I say, pointing. “In the book, Gregor’s tournament colors are purple and yellow.”
“So Summer was writing about the stadium,” Brynn says. “We already knew that. We wrote about a lot of real places.”
We move past rows of empty bleachers. I try to imagine what Summer might have seen here, what might have stuck with her. High school boys, padded and painted, moving in formation. Cheerleaders chanting and stamping, backflipping on the grass. Fans roaring in the bleachers. Does any of it matter? Does any of it relate to what came afterward?
After twenty minutes, Brynn loses patience. “This is stupid,” she says. “What are we supposed to be doing, communing with the spirits of cheerleaders past?”
Even Abby has to admit she’s right. There is nothing here, no old voices whispering secrets to us. Nothing but the continued squeaks and honks of the woodwinds and a distant shouting as the parade-goers assemble, all those hundreds of people so beautifully fixed in the present, in this day, under the bright sunshine.
“Drums over here. No, on the other side of the picnic bench. Danny, are you listening?”
A woman is trying to herd the marching band into formation and not having very much luck. One of the younger boys is running around with a flute between his legs, laughing maniacally.
“Danny, stop that.” As the woman turns around to yell, sweeping her frizzy blond hair away from her eyes, I stop. It’s our old Life Skills teacher, and—I nearly laugh out loud—she’s still wearing that awful purple cardigan.
Brynn recognizes her at the same time I do. “Holy shit,” she says. “That’s Ms. Gray.”
Miraculously, she hears her name over the clamor. Or maybe her eyes just land on us. For a fraction of a second she looks shocked. But almost immediately, she comes toward us, with both arms outstretched, although she stops several feet away from us and doesn’t move to close the distance.
“I don’t believe it,” she says. She drops her hands against her thighs with a clapping sound. “I don’t believe it. You two.”
“You remember us,” I say. Stupid, since she obviously does. For some reason I feel shy in front of her. Embarrassed. She actually looks happy to see us.
“Of course I remember you,” she says in her gentle voice. Brynn and Summer always used to lose it when she said words like syphilis or diaphragm in that singsong. “Mia and Brynn . . .” She shakes her head. “What are you doing here?”
I can’t think of an excuse. Luckily, Abby jumps in. “We just came to check out the start of the parade.” Then: “Um, I think that kid’s trying to stick his head inside the trombone.”
Ms. Gray spins around. “Tyler, please,” she barks, and then turns around to face us again. “The town was looking for volunteers. I can’t think why I said yes.” Her eyes are enormous, bug-size behind her glasses. “But tell me—how are you? I’ve thought about you a lot. I’ve wondered . . .”
She trails off, leaving the question unspoken.
I’ve wondered what happened to you.
I’ve wondered if you survived. And how.
“We’re okay.” Lying is just another thing that takes practice. Your muscles get used to it over time. “Actually,” I say, before I can think about it, or wonder whether it’s a good idea, because thinking of Summer—beautiful Summer, a ballerina with her arms up, center stage, light spilling around her in a pool, light pouring from her—makes my chest tight with pain, “we’re kind of doing a project. About Summer. Summer Marks.”
She flinches when she hears the name, like so many people do here in town. Like it’s a curse word. But she recovers quickly enough. “I see,” she says, adjusting her glasses. “Is this for the anniversary memorial?”
“Yeah,” Brynn jumps in when my voice, seemingly exhausted, simply curls up. It does that still, sometimes. Retreats, withdraws. Peters out. Like it’s a living thing with its own moods and appetites. I’d forgotten that yesterday, Twin Lakes had been planning a big five-year-anniversary commemoration of Summer’s death. It must have been delayed because of the storm. “Yeah, it’s for the anniversary. Kind of like . . . a memory book. We’re talking to everyone who knew her.” I’m sure Ms. Gray can’t tell she’s lying, but I can. It’s the way she’s speaking, kind of breathless, as if she’s been running for a while.
Ms. Gray smiles. “Well, I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell you anything you don’t already know,” she says. “You know Summer wasn’t with me for very long. Life Skills,” she adds, with a little shrug, “is a misnomer. The school sticks the students with me once a week to satisfy a state requirement about sex education. The rest is just fluff.”
Brynn and I exchange a look. There’s something thrilling about hearing Ms. Gray admit it after all these years—that’s exactly what we used to say. Just give us some condoms and a forty-five-minute free period, Summer had said during one lesson, so loudly I was sure Ms. Gray had heard.
And again, I feel that knifepoint of sadness thinking of all the things Summer will never hear, see, or know.
“Still,” Brynn says. “Is there anything? Anything at all about her you remember?”
“I remember the three of you were together all the time. I had to separate you so you wouldn’t pass notes in class.” Ms. Gray’s smile fades. “Summer was a difficult student, in some ways. But very sweet, very alive, if you know what I mean.”
We do. Of course we do. Summer was twice as alive as other people.
I fumble for a way to find out what I want to know—an explanation for all those red marks on the page, for the fact that Summer seemingly couldn’t write. “What do you mean by difficult? You mean she was having trouble?”
Ms. Gray tilts her head to one side, giving her the look of a bird that has just spotted a crumb. “Can I ask why you want to know?”
I glance over at Brynn. We should have agreed on a story in advance. Now I can’t think of a single excuse.
Luckily, Abby comes to the rescue. “We want to celebrate the real Summer. The Summer nobody knew. That’s the point of the memory book.”
“Were you a friend of hers too?” Ms. Gray asks. Abby nods, and I pray Ms. Gray won’t know the difference. Apparently she doesn’t, because she goes on, “I think I remember more than I would have otherwise, given . . .” She gestures helplessly. “She was very enthusiastic about the things that came easily to her. She loved to talk about the reading we did. And she was a great reader. A very slow reader, but she truly loved it. But with other aspects of the class, she struggled.”
“Writing,” I say, remembering her marked-up quiz and feeling a tickling pressure all along my spine.
Ms. Gray nods, but I can tell we’re losing her attention. The marching band is breaking formation again. She keeps casting worried glances over one shoulder. “She was badly dyslexic,” she says. “It slowed her reading and made it hard for her to write. She was very, very frustrated. I think she was embarrassed, too. I understand she’d bounced around quite a bit.” Ms. Gray shrugs. “Other than that, I never got much of a sense of her. I tried to help her, you know. I gave her extra time on the homework and on our quizzes. I suggested she go speak to her guidance counselor or get help from the Tutoring Center. She refused. She said she wasn’t stupid.” Ms. Gray spreads her hands. “Well, of course that wasn’t what I’d been implying. But afterward she wouldn’t listen to me, no matter what I suggested.” This time her smile is anemic and barely reaches her eyes. “She was a sweet girl. She tried hard—too hard, in certain ways. She was prone to . . . exaggerating. Not lying, exactly, but making things up. Colin, get back in line.” This to a little kid carrying a tuba practically as big as he is.
“What’s the difference?” Abby asks, genuinely curious.
Ms. Gray turns back to us, squinting. “I always think of lying as a desire to hide the truth. But with Summer . . . I had the feeling she wanted to remake the truth. Just invent a whole new one.”
There’s a beat of silence. Even though Brynn doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at me, I know we must be thinking the same thing. We understand. We remember. I have the sudden, stupid urge to reach out and grab Brynn’s hand, but of course I don’t.
Ms. Gray shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing you were looking for.”
“That’s okay,” I say quickly. “Every little bit helps. Thanks, Ms. Gray.”
She makes a face as several flute players begin to compete over who can blow the loudest, shrillest, most obnoxious sound. “Sorry. I should get these monsters up the hill. The parade will be starting any second.”
But even as we’re turning away, she calls us back.
“You know, Summer did get help eventually,” she says slowly, as if she’s not really sure she should be speaking and so she’s just letting the words fall out on their own. “She found a boy to tutor her. I might not even have remembered except . . . well. I think the idea is that they became close. Very close.”
The sun blinks out. I hold my breath. I know what she’s going to say. Of course I do.
But Brynn still makes her say it.
“Who?” Brynn asks.
“Owen,” she says, almost apologetically. “Owen Waldmann.”